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https://archive.org/details/theoryofknowledgOOstro 


A  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


WHY  THE  MIND  HAS  A  BODY 
Out  of  -print, 

and  superseded  as  to  doctrine  by 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 
An  attempt  to  conceive  the  mind 
as  a  product  of  evolution. 

THE  WISDOM  OF  THE  BEASTS 
Philosophical  Fables. 


A  THEORY  OF 
KNOWLEDGE 


CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  STRONG 


IJeto  gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


1923 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  R.  &  R.  Clark,  Limited,  Edinburgh. 


Contents 


Introduction 

CHAP. 

I.  Immediate  Experience 
II.  Time  and  Space  . 

III.  Contemplation 

IV.  Life  . 


Introduction 

The  theory  set  forth  in  the  following 
pages  rests  on  two  assumptions  :  that 
there  is  a  real  world  in  time  and  space, 
and  that  the  self  is  a  part  of  it.  I  cannot 
resist  the  conviction  that  Nature,  spread 
out  in  time  and  space  as  it  appears  to  be, 
is  real  ;  and  everything  seems  to  me  to 
show  that  the  self,  with  all  its  faculties, 
is  an  outgrowth  of  Nature,  though  in 
some  of  its  manifestations  it  rises  above 
Nature. 

I  conceive  the  self  as  consisting  of 
immediate  experience,  or  feeling. 

In  the  first  chapter,  availing  myself  of 
the  help  of  an  important  discussion  of 
Mr.  Bradley,  I  endeavour  to  show  that 


Vll 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

there  is  such  a  thing  as  immediate  ex¬ 
perience,  that  is,  experience  in  which  there 
is  no  distinction  of  subject  and  object. 

In  the  second,  I  give  reasons  for  thinking 
that  immediate  experience  is  in  time  and 
space,  and  constitutes  the  inner  being  or 
substance  of  the  things  we  perceive.  The 
self  would  then  be  identical  with  an  extract 
from,  or  pattern  of  processes  in,  the  nervous 
system. 

In  the  third  chapter  I  discuss  the 
bearing  of  this  on  knowledge.  There  is 
a  feeling  (say,  a  visual  sensation)  in  the 
brain,  and  this  feeling  is  the  part  of  the 
self  which  enables  it  to  know.  When  a 
not-self  appears  before  the  self,  it  does 
so  because  we  react  or  tend  to  react  as 
if  we  were  in  the  presence  of  an  object — 
the  feeling  being  that  which  prompts  us 
to  do  so,  and  directs  our  activity  :  in  such 
wise  that  the  datum  (the  object  as  given) 
is  apprehended,  not  by  the  feeling  alone, 


viu 


Introduction 

but  by  feeling  and  activity  combined — 
in  other  words,  by  the  intellect . 

No  feeling  is  ever  as  such  a  datum . 
When  it  seems  to  be  a  datum,  it  is  because 
the  intellect  is  now  directed  upon  /V,  not 
upon  the  external  thing  :  two  activities 
of  the  mind  which  cannot  occur  together. 
The  intellect  is  directed  upon  the  feeling, 
because  the  feeling  prompts  us  to  move¬ 
ment  appropriate  to  itself  as  a  feeling  ; 
when  this  happens,  the  feeling  is  not 
merely  in  our  minds,  but  it  has  become 
a  datum  for  us. 

It  is  easy,  in  analysing  perception,  to 
change  inadvertently  the  direction  of  one’s 
attention,  and  fix  it  on  something,  namely 
the  visual  or  auditory  sensation,  which  is 
not  the  datum  of  perception  at  all  ;  all 
the  while  imagining  that  one  is  still  per¬ 
ceiving.  This  is  done,  I  think,  when  it 
is  said  that  what  we  see  is  evidently  “  a 
patch  of  colour  ”  ;  it  is  certainly  done 


IX 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

when  it  is  said  that,  in  looking  obliquely 
at  a  coin,  what  we  see  is  “  oval.”  The 
element  of  objectivity,  of  externality, 
has  been  omitted,  which  is  essential  in 
perception.  We  do  not  see  mere  colour, 
or  an  oval — we  see  a  coloured  thing,  a 
round  coin  one  side  of  which  is  farther 
away  from  us  than  the  other.  This  in¬ 
advertent  substitution  of  the  “sense-datum” 
for  the  true  datum  of  perception  seems  to 
me  to  vitiate  most  contemporary  thought 
on  this  subject  ;  and  even  to  be  the  secret 
of  the  hold  which  some  widely  received 
systems  of  philosophy  have  on  the  mind. 

After  discussing  the  application  of  the 
theory  to  the  different  forms  of  knowledge, 
I  draw  in  the  fourth  chapter  the  con¬ 
sequences  that  follow  from  it  as  regards 
life  and  action. 

A  philosopher  is  commonly  thought  of 
as  a  reasoner,  but  I  would  rather  conceive 
him  as  a  person  who  is  careful  in  his 


x 


Introduction 


assumptions.  The  most  agile  reasoners  are 
sometimes  indifferent  or  not  sufficiently 
careful  as  to  their  premises,  in  accordance 
with  Mr.  Russell’s  mot  that  a  mathe¬ 
matician  is  a  man  who  does  not  know 
what  he  is  talking  about  or  care  whether 
what  he  says  is  true,  so  long  as  it  is  correctly 
reasoned. 

The  chief  differences  of  opinion  in 
philosophy — such  as,  whether  the  funda¬ 
mental  reality  is  matter  or  spirit,  whether 
it  is  one  or  many,  whether  it  is  the  same 
as  our  experiences  of  it  or  different  from 
them — owe  their  persistence,  so  it  seems 
to  me,  to  assumptions,  often  made  hastily, 
concerning  the  factors  and  the  relations 
involved  in  the  simplest  form  of  know¬ 
ledge,  perception  :  so  much  so,  that  it  is 
waste  of  time,  and  productive  of  endless 
confusion,  to  discuss  remoter  issues,  and 
not  concentrate  attention  on  the  primary 
question,  the  analysis  of  perception. 


xi 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

At  a  moment  when  such  marvellous 
advances  are  being  made  in  physics,  a 
philosopher  can  but  turn  with  melancholy 
from  the  order  and  intellectual  discipline 
which  are  there  the  rule  to  the  anarchy 
and  chaos  in  his  own  department.  Is 
there  never  to  be  a  principle  upon  which 
all  metaphysicians  are  agreed  ?  The  reader 
may  think  the  theory  here  set  forth  ill 
adapted  to  serve  as  such  a  principle.  I 
can  at  least  say  that  I  have  honestly  tried, 
so  far  as  my  powers  and  my  strength 
permitted,  to  make  it  accord  both  with 
the  facts  and  with  the  spirit  of  natural 
science. 


Xll 


CHAPTER  I 


Immediate  Experience 

My  theory  rests  on  an  analysis  of  per¬ 
ception  which  I  can  perhaps  make  clear 
to  the  reader  by  taking  the  example  of 
hearing  a  sound. 

A  sound  is  ordinarily  heard  as  an  event 
outside  us.  Now  the  externality  cannot 
be  properly  said  to  be  heard,  or  sensible  ; 
and  I  suggest  that  it  is  brought  before  us 
by  the  motor  tendencies  that  accompany 
the  hearing  of  the  sound.  In  the  first 
place,  we  tend  to  turn  the  ear  or  the  head 
in  a  certain  direction  ;  in  the  second  place, 
we  are  prompted  to  act  or  prepare  our¬ 
selves  for  action  as  with  reference  to  an 
object  outside  us.  These  tendencies,  ac¬ 
cording  to  current  psychological  theory, 
manifest  themselves  in  consciousness  only 

I  B 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

in  the  form  of  sensations  from  the 
muscles,  “  bodily  resonance  ”  ;  but  it  is 
the  actual  contraction  or  tendency  to  con¬ 
traction  of  the  muscles,  not  the  muscular 
sensations,  upon  which  the  exteriorization 
of  the  sound  depends. 

The  result  of  these  things  is  that  the 
datum  of  perception — the  external  sound 
as  heard — is  not  purely  sensible,  being  due 
to  an  auditory  sensation  and  a  tendency 
to  motion  combined  ;  or,  to  speak  more 
correctly,  it  is  not  a  datum  of  sensation  at 
all,  but  a  datum,  as  we  may  say,  of  appre- 
hension ,  mediated  partly  by  sensation  and 
partly  by  movement.  It  is  a  sort  of 
external  terminus  upon  which  these  two 
sides  of  our  nature  converge.  This 
activity  of  apprehending  things  without 
immediately  feeling  them — for  we  do 
apprehend  them,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  of 
our  acting  with  reference  to  them — must 
be  conceived  as  an  exercise  of  the  intellect. 

Perception  is  indeed  usually  referred 
to  the  intellect,  but  we  are  supposed 

to  perceive  the  sound  by  connecting  it 

2 


Immediate  Experience 

mentally  with  other  earlier  or  possible 
experiences.  That  we  do  thus  connect  it 
there  can  be  no  doubt  ;  but  such  associative 
connecting,  or  “  apperception,”  as  the 
phrase  is,  is  not  necessary  to  our  perceiving 
it  :  a  new-born  child,  or  a  young  animal, 
would  perceive  the  sound  as  external  if 
he  turned  his  head  toward  the  source  and 
tended  to  react  to  the  latter. 

It  is  possible  for  us,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  suppress  these  tendencies  and  consider 
the  sound  in  itself.  We  do  this  when  we 
become  aware  that  we  hear  the  sound  ;  or, 
to  speak  more  exactly,  when  we  take  the 
sound  in  so  far  as  it  is  an  activity  or  state 
of  hearing.  Taken  in  this  way,  the  sound 
is  an  auditory  sensation.  But  when  we 
were  perceiving  the  external  event,  we  did 
not  take  the  sound  in  this  way  :  the 
auditory  sensation  was  not  then  a  datum  ; 
and  it  follows  therefore  (unless  we  are  to 
consider  that  this  change  in  the  direction 
of  our  attention  brought  the  thing  observed 
into  existence)  that  during  perception  oj 
the  external  event  the  auditory  sensation 

3 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

existed  without  being  a  datum .  Now  this 
is  what  is  meant  by  its  being  an  immediate 
experience. 

If  we  turn  from  hearing  to  vision,  we 
find  a  similar  state  of  things.  Take,  for 
instance,  the  visual  perception  of  depth. 
Depth  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  sensible. 
Yet  it  cannot  be  a  character  of  visual 
sensation  proper,  for  colours  are  extended 
in  two  dimensions  only.  There  is  a  blur¬ 
ring  due  to  binocular  disparity,  but  this  is 
not  itself  depth.  And  the  sensations  in 
the  muscles  of  the  eyes,  whatever  their 
importance,  are  evidently  wholly  unlike 
a  depth,  say,  of  a  yard  or  of  a  rod.  But 
the  externality  here  can  be  easily  explained 
if  we  recall,  first,  that  when  we  see  an 
object  at  a  certain  distance  we  look  towards 
it  and  accommodate  the  eyes,  and,  secondly, 
that  we  instinctively  prepare  ourselves  for 
action,  if  action  should  be  called  for,  with 
reference  to  an  object  at  that  point.  These 
motor  tendencies,  taken  with  the  colour 
sensation,  cause  us  to  be  aware  of  the  datum 
“  an  external  coloured  thing.”  And,  as 

4 


Immediate  Experience 

before,  we  can  suppress  the  tendencies, 
and  take  the  (extended)  colour  in  itself 
as  a  bare  experience,  when  what  we  have 
before  us  is  the  visual  sensation.  And 
this,  again,  was  not  a  datum  when  we  were 
naively  perceiving  ;  the  datum  then  was 
“  an  external  coloured  thing.” 

Indeed,  the  mere  use  of  our  muscles, 
these  bodily  organs,  in  perceiving  implies 
that  what  is  before  us  is  a  thing,  and  not 
a  bare  state  or  quality  ;  what  we  turn 
toward,  accommodate  for,  and  prepare  to 
act  with  reference  to,  must  be  as  material 
as  the  body. 

Finally,  in  the  case  of  touch,  what  we 
are  aware  of — say,  in  touching  marble — 
is  “  a  hard  thing  ”  ;  but  if  we  choose  to 
abstract  from  the  externality  and  consider 
barely  what  we  feel,  the  new  datum  is  a 
pressure  sensation.  Similarly  pain,  as  in 
the  case  of  an  aching  tooth,  may  be 
projected  outside  the  mind  and  taken  as 
a  state  of  the  tooth  ;  but  if  considered  in 
itself,  as  a  bare  existence  unreferred,  it  is 
a  feeling. 


5 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  repeat  these 
well-worn  examples,  if  it  were  not  neces¬ 
sary  to  insist  that  the  feeling  or  sensation 
is  never  observed  at  the  same  time  as  the 
external  object  ;  and  that  consequently, 
in  observation  of  the  external  object,  it 
exists  without  being  a  datum. 

I  turn  from  these  concrete  facts  to 
Mr.  Bradley’s  discussion,  in  his  Essays  on 
Truth  and  Reality ,  of  “  Our  Knowledge  of 
Immediate  Experience,”  which  seems  to 
me  one  of  the  most  acute  and  profound 
contributions  to  philosophy  that  have  been 
made  in  our  generation.  I  think  his 
position  is  sound  except  in  a  certain 
point  ;  with  regard  to  that  point  I  shall 
have  criticisms  to  offer. 

Mr.  Bradley  defines  immediate  ex¬ 
perience  as  experience  in  which  there  is 
no  distinction  of  subject  and  object  ;  or, 
as  I  should  say,  it  is  feeling  without  a 
datum.  It  is,  to  his  mind,  “  the  one  road 
.  .  .  to  the  solution  of  ultimate  problems  ” 
(p.  160)  ;  an  opinion  with  which  I 

6 


Immediate  Experience 

cordially  agree.  For  him  it  is  essential 
(here  our  roads  diverge)  to  the  defence 
of  idealistic  monism  ;  but  it  can  be  made 
to  serve  the  purposes  of  a  very  different 
doctrine. 

Let  us  hear  his  statement  of  the  funda¬ 
mental  point.  “  I  have  had  occasion  often 
to  urge  the  claims  of  immediate  experience, 
and  to  insist  that  what  we  experience  is 
not  merely  objects.  The  experienced  will 
not  all  fall  under  the  head  of  an  object 
for  a  subject.  If  there  were  any  such  law, 
pain  and  pleasure  would  be  obvious  ex¬ 
ceptions  ;  but  the  facts,  when  we  look  at 
them,  show  us  that  such  a  law  does  not 
exist.  In  my  general  feeling  at  any 
moment  there  is  more  than  the  objects 
before  me,  and  no  perception  of  objects 
will  exhaust  the  sense  of  a  living  emotion. 
And  the  same  result  is  evident  when  I 
consider  my  will.  I  cannot  reduce  my 
experienced  volition  to  a  movement  of 
objects  .  .  .”  (p.  159). 

The  statement  thus  far  seems  to  me 
unexceptionable,  except  for  a  certain  point 

7 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

which  might  be  purely  verbal.  I  refer 
to  the  phrase  “  what  we  experience.,,  To 
say  that  “  what  we  experience  is  not 
merely  objects  ”  is  to  imply  that  we 
experience  also  the  subject — that  is,  the 
feeling  or  sensation  ;  and  the  same  thing 
is  implied  when  it  is  said  that  “  the  ex¬ 
perienced  will  not  all  fall  under  the  head 
of  an  object  for  a  subject  ”  ;  likewise 
in  the  phrase  “  my  experienced  volition. ” 
t  Now  we  have  seen  that  feeling  or  sensation, 
and  the  same  will  apply  to  emotion  and 
will,  are  not  data,  except  by  virtue  of  a 
special  act  which  usually  at  least  is  sub¬ 
sequent.  Would  it  not  be  better,  there¬ 
fore,  not  to  use  the  passive  participle 
“  experienc ed”  which  implies  that  they 
are  objects  or  data,  and  to  say  of  them 
simply  that  they  are  “  experience,”  or 
“  feeling  ”  ?  I  do  not  think  of  denying 
this — indeed,  it  is  a  vital  part  of  my  con¬ 
tention  ;  but,  if  they  are  to  be  distinguished 
from  data,  it  is  important  not  to  say  that 
they  are  “  felt  ”  or  “  experienced,”  thus 
illegitimately  fusing  subsequent  intro- 

8 


Immediate  Experience 

spective  awareness  of  them  with  their 
original  existence.  In  a  matter  requiring 
the  utmost  nicety  and  precision,  we  cannot 
be  too  careful  not  to  use  terms  that  suggest 
what  is  false.  Our  great  need  is  to  purify 
our  conceptions. 

I  have  interrupted  the  quotation  in  the 
middle  in  order  to  make  this  comment, 
and  I  now  proceed  with  it.  “  I  cannot 
accept  the  suggestion  that  of  this  my 
volition  I  have  no  direct  knowledge  at 
all.  We  in  short  have  experience  in  which 
there  is  no  distinction  between  my  aware¬ 
ness  and  that  of  which  it  is  aware.  There 
is  an  immediate  feeling,  a  knowing  and 
being  in  one  .  .  .”  (p.  159). 

Again  I  interrupt,  to  say  that  the 
little  cloud  that  appeared  on  the  horizon 
in  the  first  part  of  the  quotation  has  grown 
black  and  threatening  in  this. 

It  is  not  that  Mr.  Bradley  does  not 
deny  any  distinction  between  my  aware¬ 
ness  and  that  of  which  I  am  aware,  between 
subject  and  object.  He  is  perfectly  clear 
as  to  what  may  be  called  the  simplicity 

9 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

of  experience  :  “  the  distinction  between 
the  experienced  and  experience  seems  in 
the  end  totally  inadmissible  ”  (p.  194). 
But  this  is  inconsistent  with  his  description 
of  experience  as  “  awareness  ”  :  how  can 
there  be  awareness,  which  is  awareness  of 
nothing  ?  Still  more,  when  he  says  that 
he  “  cannot  accept  the  suggestion  that  of 
this  my  volition  I  have  no  direct  knowledge 
at  all,”  the  word  “  knowledge  ”  seems  to 
go  far  beyond  anything  that  the  cir¬ 
cumstances,  or  his  own  doctrine,  justify. 
Can  there  be  knowledge  without  a  datum, 
and  is  not  knowledge  the  presence  of  a 
datum  and  something  more  ? 

Mr.  Bradley’s  real  view  seems  to  be 
that  there  is  in  immediate  experience,  if 
not  knowledge,  at  least  awareness,  but 
that  between  the  awareness  and  that  of 
which  there  is  awareness  there  is  no  dis¬ 
tinction.  I  believe  that  such  a  view  means 
something  right,  but  says  something  wrong. 

The  “  awareness  ”  which  it  ascribes  to 
immediate  experience  is  that  peculiar  char¬ 
acter  which  we  designate  as  feeling :  I  am 

10 


Immediate  Experience 

accustomed  to  call  it  the  “  psychical  ” 
character,  and  to  use  for  it  the  metaphor 
of  “  luminosity.”  This  character — such  is 
the  fundamental  contention  of  the  present 
book — implies  no  datum.  (It  becomes 
itself  a  datum,  or  rather  becomes  known 
through  a  datum,  in  introspection.)  This 
is  what  is  right.  What  is  wrong  is  the 
suggestion — identical  with  that  conveyed 
(and  rightly  conveyed)  by  the  expressions 
“  experienced,”  “  felt  ” — that  in  mere 
feeling  there  is  a  datum.  Immediate  ex¬ 
perience  becomes  a  datum  (i.e.  is  known 
through  a  datum)  only  in  introspection . 
The  only  way  to  avoid  this  misleading 
suggestion  is  not  to  use  the  word 
v  “  awareness  ”  for  immediate  experience 
at  all,  but  to  content  ourselves  with 
“  experience,”  “  feeling.” 

But  a  final  argument  against  us  may 
be  used.  How,  if  a  feeling  is  not  aware¬ 
ness,  can  the  mere  addition  of  a  movement 
or  a  motor  tendency,  something  wholly 
external  and  unfelt,  give  rise  to  awareness  ? 
The  answer  is  that,  when  a  feeling  is  thus 

1 1 


4s 


» 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

used,  the  datum  is  quite  properly  said  to 
be  “  felt  ”  ;  and  that  the  relation  between 
a  feeling  and  what  is  felt,  in  this  external 
way,  is  what  is  meant  by  awareness.  The 
difficulty  now  reduces  itself  wholly  to  a 
question  of  terms. 

It  is  true  that  Mr.  Bradley  continues  : 
“.  .  .  A  knowing  and  being  in  one,  with 
which  knowledge  begins  ;  and,  though 
this  is  in  a  manner  transcended  [we  have 
explained  the  manner],  it  nevertheless 
remains  throughout  as  the  present  founda¬ 
tion  of  my  known  world.  And  if  you 
remove  this  direct  sense  of  my  momentary 
contents  and  being,  you  bring  down  the 
whole  of  consciousness  in  one  common 
wreck.  For  it  is  in  the  end  ruin  to  divide 
experience  into  something  on  one  side 
experienced  as  an  object  and  on  the  other 
side  something  not  experienced  at  all  ” 
(p.  160). 

These  sentences  can  hardly  be  acquitted 
of  a  measure  of  confusion.  In  the  first 
place,  there  is  a  “  sense,”  and  it  has 
“  contents,”  that  is,  a  specific  character 

12 


Immediate  Experience 

(which  appears  in  the  object  of  perception 
and  the  object  of  introspection  as  a  quality), 
which  even  contains  (as  Mr.  Bradley  later 
states)  diversity  ;  but  it  is  not  a  sense  oj 
the  contents,  it  is  a  sense  containing  them. 
And  we  do  not  “  remove  ”  this  sense, 
hence  there  is  no  “  ruin.”  In  the  second 
place,  if  the  datum  is  not  experienced  in 
some  sense,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  can 
be  a  datum  ;  and  if  it  is  experienced, 
Mr.  Bradley  himself  divides  experience 
into  something  on  one  side  experienced 
as  an  object,  and  on  the  other  side  some¬ 
thing  not  in  that  sense  experienced  at  all. 

Having  now  clarified  our  conceptions 
and  fixed  our  terminology,  let  us  consider 
some  of  the  examples  of  immediate  ex¬ 
perience  which  Mr.  Bradley  cites. 

A  particularly  convincing  case  is  that 
of  the  will.  He  has  a  fine  passage  about 
it  which  deserves  to  be  quoted.  “  We 
have  in  volition  a  positive  experience, 
which  is  more  than  any  sensation  or  idea 
or  any  mere  set  of  sensations  and  ideas 

13 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

with  their  relations  and  movements.  If 
you  take  my  state  of  mind  before  the 
volition,  followed  by  the  actual  satisfaction 
with  its  awareness  of  agency,  and  if  you 
attempt  to  confine  all  this  within  the  limits 
of  what  takes  place  before  me  in  the 
objective  field,  the  result  is  failure.  You 
perceive  forthwith  that  in  your  analysis 
there  is  something  left  out,  and  that  this 
something  is  a  content  which  is  experienced 
positively.  The  felt  outgoing  of  myself 
and  from  myself  has  been  ignored  ”  (pp. 
188-9).  This  seems  to  me  excellent,  down 
to  the  expression  “  experienced  positively.” 
After  the  previous  discussion,  we  may 
without  more  ado  substitute  for  this  the 
words  “  which  is  a  positive  experience.” 

It  is  evident  that  the  essential  act  in 
volition  cannot  be  a  datum  at  the  moment 
when  it  is  performed  ;  and  if  there  seems 
to  be  any  doubt  as  to  this,  it  is  removed 
by  such  an  analysis  of  will  as  is  made 
by  modern  psychology.  Will  is  consent 
to  an  idea,  a  datum  brought  before  the 
mind  by  an  image  which  presumably  is 

14 


Immediate  Experience 

heightened  ;  but  the  mere  heightening  is  not 
that  in  which  volition  consists.  It  consists 
rather  in  a  removal  of  inhibitions,  which 
up  to  the  moment  of  willing  or  consent 
have  been  brought  before  the  mind  by 
sensations  from  the  muscles  ;  the  fading 
or  lowering  of  the  images  on  which  these 
inhibitions  depend  is  thus  as  essential  an 
ingredient  of  will  as  the  central  idea,  and 
expresses  itself  in  the  sense  of  yielding  to 
that  idea.  This  sense  is  thus  partly  a 
matter  of  images  and  partly  muscular. 

Now  both  the  fading  ideas  and  the 
muscular  contractions  may  be,  along  with 
the  central  idea,  data  before  the  mind  ; 
and  it  is  this  fact  perhaps  which  accounts 
for  Mr.  Bradley’s  supposed  observation 
that  willing  is  “experienced”  (p.  189) 
at  the  moment.  On  the  other  hand,  none 
of  the  sensations  and  images  (the  immediate 
experiences)  upon  which  these  data  depend 
can  by  any  possibility  be  given  at  the  same 
moment  as  the  data.  And  if,  therefore, 
we  are  to  indulge  in  introspection  of  the 
will — the  same  as  if  we  are  to  indulge  in 

15 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

introspection  of  the  visual  and  auditory 
sensations  used  for  perception — it  must  be 
subsequently  to  the  occurrence  of  the  act. 

But  there  is  another  element  to  be 
considered.  In  the  case  of  the  sensations 
used  for  perception  (which  come  from 
continuing  objects  outside  us,  not  from 
events  within  us  which  are  momentary 
and  then  gone),  we  can  cease  using  a 
sensation  for  perception  and  use  it,  by  the 
change  in  the  direction  of  our  attention 
before  described,  for  knowledge  of  itself. 
Thus,  in  the  case  of  sensations  from  outside 
objects,  and  also  of  continuing  sensations 
from  bodily  parts  or  internal  organs,  it 
is  possible  to  introspect  a  sensation  at  the 
moment  of  its  existence  ;  while  in  the  case 
of  will  and  other  acts,  it  is  at  most  the 
after-image  of  the  psychic  event  that  can 
be  introspected. 

This,  I  think,  is  a  sufficient  answer  to 
Mr.  Bradley's  refutation  of  those  who  hold 
“  that  my  present  state  is  not  observed 
and  that  I  depend  wholly  on  memory  ” 

(p.  1 66). 

1 6 


Immediate  Experience 

Like  the  will,  the  various  forms  of 
emotion,  and  also  pleasure  and  pain  (the 
affection,  not  the  sensation),  are  not 
originally  data  before  us,  but  dwell  as  it 
were  in  the  background  of  consciousness 
and  constitute  our  attitude  toward  the 
object  perceived.  If  one  of  these  states, 
besides  existing,  is  noticed,  that  is  an 
additional  fact :  the  existence  of  the  feeling, 
and  our  awareness  of  it,  are  two  distinct 
things.  As  we  have  seen  this  to  be  the 
case  with  visual  and  auditory  sensations, 
we  can  have  no  difficulty  in  admitting  it 
here. 

There  is,  however,  another  way  in  which 
pain,  pleasure,  and  emotion  may  come  to 
our  knowledge,  although  they  were  not  as 
such  data  at  the  moment.  These  feelings 
may  not  remain  entirely  in  the  background, 
but  may  colour  the  foreground  as  well 
and  add  a  quality  to  the  datum  :  as  when 
we  say  that  a  person  is  hateful,  or  a  place 
pleasant.  Or,  again,  in  addition  to  per¬ 
ceiving  the  outer  object,  we  may  have  a 
simultaneous  less  distinct  awareness  of  our- 

i7 


c 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

selves  (that  is,  of  the  body,  the  empirical 
self)  and  feel  the  emotion  taking  place  in 
its  parts.  But  to  both  of  these  alternatives 
the  same  observation  applies  as  to  external 
perception  :  it  is  the  data  only  of  which 
we  are  thus  aware,  and  for  knowledge 
of  the  sensations  underlying  them  we 
must  have  recourse  to  subsequent  intro¬ 
spection. 

Let  us  now  ask  what  is  meant  by  the 
position  in  the  background ,  in  which  we 
have  found  emotions,  volitions,  and  pleasure 
and  pain  to  be  placed. 

The  states  used  for  perception  (visual, 
auditory,  tactile  sensations)  were  not  in 
such  a  position  :  though  not  themselves 
given,  they  “  gave,”  as  we  might  say — 
that  is,  they  were  heightened  and  yielded 
data  that  were  present  to  attention  ;  but 
the  emotional  states  yield  no  data,  except 
in  the  form  of  the  above  described  “  colour¬ 
ings.”  They  therefore  are  in  the  back¬ 
ground,  or  belong  to  what  is  called  the 
“  field  of  inattention.”  Secondly,  owing 

1 8 


Immediate  Experience 

to  this  position  (and  perhaps  also  to  a 
lower  degree  of  that  heightening  in  which 
attention  psychologically  consists),  they 
are  not  discriminated  into  parts  ;  they 
have  a  certain  vagueness  or,  to  use  Mr. 
Bradley’s  word,  “  nebulosity  ”  ;  they  are 
felt,  when  we  cast  a  glance  in  their 
direction,  only  as  wholes.  If  we  chose — 
in  the  case  of  anger,  for  instance — we 
could  at  any  moment  discriminate  and  fix 
our  attention  on  a  part,  which  we  should 
find  to  be  a  sensation  in  some  internal 
organ  ;  but  this  would  be  to  break  up  the 
emotion,  to  do  something  more  than  merely 
feel.  In  naive  feeling  and  willing,  our 
attention  is  directed  wholly  to  the  exciting 
cause,  or  the  thing  to  be  done,  and  we 
do  not  on  that  account  the  less  truly  feel 
and  will. 

It  appears,  then,  that  a  removal  of  our 
attention  from  states  of  feeling  does  not 
cause  them  to  vanish — except  from  the 
attention  ;  that  they  can  still  exist,  though 
without  the  benefit  of  our  support  ;  and 
this  lends  plausibility  to  another  case  of 

i9 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

immediate  experience  that  has  long  caused 
speculation.  “  We  all,”  says  Mr.  Bradley, 
“  when  our  attention  is  directed  to  our 
extremities  or  to  some  internal  organ, 
may  become  aware  of  sensations  which 
previously  we  did  not  notice.  And  with 
regard  to  these  sensations  there  may  be 
a  doubt  whether  they  were  actually  there 
before,  or  have  on  the  other  hand  been 
made  by  our  attending  ”  (p.  1 6 1 ). 

Mr.  Bradley  takes  the  former  view,  in 
which  I  concur.  These  sensations  (it  may 
be,  much  reduced,  through  the  absence  of 
heightening)  are  merely  an  extension  of 
the  “  field  of  inattention.”  This  is  a 
return  to  the  petites  perceptions  of  Leibniz  ; 
only  these  are  not  perceptions,  they  are 
mere  sensations. 

Note  that  this  is  a  new  class  of  immediate 
experiences  :  those  we  have  considered 
hitherto  were  more  strongly  “  illuminate,” 
and  used  either  in  perceiving  external 
objects  or  in  reacting  to  them  ;  these  are 
still  further  in  the  background  than  emotion 
and  will,  and  when  unattended  to  may 

20 


Immediate  Experience 

exist  in  very  reduced  form  ;  finally,  they 
are  in  no  way  data  of  awareness.  But 
since  we  have  recognized  that  feelings  of 
the  former  class  are  not  data  of  awareness, 
this  is  no  bar  to  their  existence. 

Mr.  Bradley  points  out  that  we  cannot 
attend  to  the  whole  of  them  at  once  (p.  1 67) 
— their  extent  is  too  vast,  as  vast  as  the 
cubic  contents  of  the  body  ;  we  can  only 
single  out  some  special  area  for  attention  ; 
when  we  do  not  do  this,  they  are  either 
not  present  to  awareness  at  all  (which  is 
usually  the  case),  or  they  collectively  yield 
that  portion  of  the  total  datum  which  is 
the  sense  of  our  own  existence. 

In  this  sense  we  meet  again  with  that 
peculiar  character  of  “  nebulosity,”  of 
“  totality,”  which  struck  us  before  in  the 
case  of  emotion.  What  is  the  explanation 
of  this  character  ?  It  will  be  found,  I 
think,  to  be  connected  with  the  motor 
side  of  consciousness,  and  to  be  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  feelings  forming  the  sense 
of  our  bodily  existence  do  not  tend  to 

21 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

call  forth  separate  reactions.  Where  this  is 
the  case,  the  feelings  give  rise  to  a  single 
unanalysed  datum.  This  condition  of 
many  feelings,  as  giving  rise  to  a  single 
datum,  may  be  fitly  called  confusion  ; 
it  is  not  a  fusion  of  the  feelings,  for  the 
moment  attention  is  paid  to  them  they 
are  found  to  be  distinct. 

If  their  distinctness  be  doubted,  let  us 
turn  to  another  instance  of  the  same  pheno¬ 
menon — the  “  nebulae,”  as  Mr.  Bradley 
calls  them,  within  the  data  forming  the 
field  of  attention.  As  I  look  off  at  the 
field  of  view,  there  are  a  hundred  objects 
which  are  not  discriminated  but  only  form 
part  of  the  total  picture  ;  these  objects 
excite  my  retina  and  my  brain  in  exactly 
the  same  way  as  those  to  which  attention 
is  paid,  they  can  hardly  fail  therefore 
to  call  forth  sensations  ;  but  they  yield 
no  separate  data — there  is  (or  may  be) 
only  one  datum,  the  field  of  view  as  a 
whole.  This  totality  is  a  uniform  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  datum  ;  one  is  tempted  to 
think  that,  if  many  details  seem  given  at 

22 


Immediate  Experience 

one  moment,  it  is  because  they  tend  to 
substitute  themselves  for  the  total  datum 
(as  our  reactive  tendencies  change),  and 
not  because  they  are  actually  given  at  the 
moment. 

Finally,  it  will  be  remembered  that  we 
explained  the  self  as  a  pattern  of  processes 
in  the  nervous  system  (this  of  course  pre¬ 
supposes  the  hypothesis  of  the  identity  of 
immediate  experience  with  matter)  ;  and 
the  question  might  be  asked,  why  does 
this  pattern  stand  out  from  other  processes, 
as  an  isolated  whole  ?  The  answer  is, 
because  it  controls  action — because  it  is 
the  determinant  of  the  motor  tendency. 
This  it  is,  as  we  have  seen,  that  causes  it 
to  have  a  datum  presented  to  it  ;  this  it 
is,  again  (owing  to  the  interlacement  or 
systematic  unity  of  the  nerve  -  process), 
that  produces  registration  1  and  entails  sub¬ 
sequent  memory  ;  it  is  this,  finally,  which 
gives  individuality  to  the  self  and  makes 
it  a  subject  contemplating  an  object. 

1  So  that  wholes  which  have  joined  for  motor  purposes  can 
be  subsequently  reinstated. 


23 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

To  sum  up  :  our  discussion  of  immediate 
experience  has  shown  the  essential  import¬ 
ance  of  movement  or  the  tendency  thereto 
as  a  factor  in  cognition.  The  neglect  of 
the  motor  side  of  the  mind  (a  consequence 
of  the  abandonment  of  realism)  appears 
as  a  grave  omission. 

Secondly,  it  follows  from  reconsideration 
of  this  factor  that  the  datum  is  distinct  from 
the  sensation . 

Granting  this,  the  further  consequence 
follows  that  the  datum  is  not  properly  a 
datum  of  sense  at  all,  but — and  this  is  the 
summit  of  our  wisdom — all  data  are 

DATA  OF  THE  INTELLECT. 

If  this  be  so,  then  no  sensation  is  ever 
as  such  a  datum  ;  and  the  possibility 
appears  that  the  unity,  which  we  discover 
in  the  datum,  does  not  belong  to  the 
sensation  which  is  its  vehicle  ;  that  while 
the  datum  is  one,  the  sensation  may  be 
many — in  short,  that  our  immediate  ex¬ 
perience  may  be  continuous  with  the  rest 
of  the  world. 


24 


Omnia ,  quamvis  diversis  gradibus ,  animata. 


Quo  corpus  aliquod  reliquis  aptius  est  ad  plura 
simul  agendum  vel  patiendum ,  eo  ejus  mens  reliquis 
aptior  est  ad  plura  simul  percipiendum. 


2S 


CHAPTER  II 


Time  and  Space 

The  sensation  is  of  course  not  merely  many 
— it  is  not  an  aggregate  of  discrete  parts. 
A  glance  at  the  visual  field  shows  that  it 
has  continuity.  Visual  sensations  are  not 
only  continuous  in  time,  they  have  also 
continuity  of  a  spatial  sort.  Now  that 
we  have  distinguished  the  sensation  from 
the  datum,  and  ascribed  unity  solely  to 
the  datum,  there  is  no  difficulty  in 
recognizing  this  inner  continuity  and 
voluminousness.  If  visual  sensations  do 
not  appear  to  have  three  dimensions  as 
well  as  two,  if  all  sensations  do  not 
appear  tridimensional,  it  may  be  because 
“  confusion  ”  has  contracted  the  useless 
dimensions  (the  dimensions  that  have 
no  bearing  on  action)  into  one — -just  as 

27 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

it  has  apparently  unified  the  sensations  of 
the  two  eyes. 

There  is  therefore  nothing  to  prevent 
sensations — or  some  simpler  form  of  im¬ 
mediate  experience,  something  related  to 
them  as  physical  events  in  general  are 
related  to  processes  in  the  nervous  sys¬ 
tem —  from  extending  away  indefinitely, 
beyond  the  borders  of  what  we  call  our 
consciousness. 

Mr.  Bradley  fully  admits  the  inner 
plurality  of  immediate  experience.  He 
says  that  it  “  need  not  be  devoid  of  internal 
diversity  ”  ;  that  “  its  content  need  not 
in  this  sense  be  simple,  and  possibly  never 
is  simple  ”  ;  that  “  it  may  comprise  simply 
in  itself  an  indefinite  amount  of  difference  ” 
(p.  174).  But  he  insists  that  it  does  so 
“  simply,”  that  this  many  is  “  felt  in  one  ” 
(ibid.). 

Though  thus  admitting  that  immediate 
experience  contains  terms,  he  is  at  pains 
to  deny  that  it  contains  relations — perhaps 
because  no  relations  are  noticed  (think 
of  the  indefinitely  numerous  unnoticed 

28 


Time  and  Space 

relations  in  the  visual  field).  “  At  any 
moment  my  actual  experience,  however 
relational  its  contents  [by  which,  as  the 
context  shows,  he  here  means  the  data 
given  to  it],  is  in  the  end  non-relational. 
No  analysis  into  relations  and  terms  can 
ever  exhaust  its  nature  or  fail  in  the 
end  to  belie  its  essence  ”  (p-  176).  if 
this  means  that  the  relations  between  the 
terms  in  immediate  experience  are  not 
given,  it  is  true  ;  if  it  means  that  the  terms 
are  not  related,  it  is  untrue. 

He  uses  this  idea  of  the  unity  or  totality 
of  immediate  experience  to  explain  the 
consciousness  of  relation.  “  Every  dis¬ 
tinction  and  relation  rests  on  an  immediate 
background  of  which  we  are  aware  [we 
have  already  dealt  with  this  last  assertion], 
and  every  distinction  and  relation  (so  far 
as  experienced)  is  also  felt,  and  felt  in  a 
sense  to  belong  to  an  immediate  totality  ” 

(Pp.  177-8). 

Where,  and  in  what  conditions,  is  this 
unity  or  totality  supposed  to  be  observed  ? 
It  is  supposed  to  be  observed  in  intro- 

29 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

spection  of  the  feeling.  In  order  to  judge 
whether  it  really  belongs  to  the  feeling, 
we  must  examine  more  closely  than  we 
have  done  hitherto  the  nature  of  intro¬ 
spection. 

Introspection  is  a  form  of  cognition  on 
a  footing  with  perception,  the  difference 
between  them  being  that  in  the  one  we 
see,  hear,  or  touch  an  external  thing,  while 
in  the  other  we  fix  our  attention  on  a 
feeling.  In  many  cases,  as  we  have  seen, 
introspection  can  only  take  place  sub¬ 
sequently  to  the  feeling,  and  be  the 
observation  of  an  image  of  it.  I  used  to 
suppose  that  this  was  always  the  case,  but 
Mr.  Bradley  has  convinced  me  (see  his 
passage,  pp.  166  ff.)  that  a  feeling  can 
sometimes  be  observed  at  the  moment  of 
its  existence.  “  To  say  that  my  present 
state  is  not  observed  [I  do  not  admit  that 
it  is  observed,  but  only  that  it  can  be] 
and  that  I  depend  wholly  on  memory, 
leads  us  into  a  position  which  is  not  tenable. 
.  .  .  I  am  unable  to  verify  in  introspection 

30 


Time  and  Space 

this  constant  presence  of  memory.  .  .  . 
What  I  feel,  that  surely  I  may  still  feel, 
though  I  also  at  the  same  time  make  it 
an  object  before  me”  (p.  166).  Note 
that  thus  the  existence  of  a  feeling  and 
its  being  observed  are  not  the  same  thing 
— it  does  not  belong  to  the  essence  of  a 
feeling  to  be  given  to  observation,  and 
when  observation  happens  that  is  an 
adventitious  fact  (as  all  knowledge  is 
adventitious  to  the  existence  known). 

How  then  does  observation  happen  ? 
A  feeling  is  made  an  object  by  attention 
fastening  on  it — that  is,  heightening  or 
“  illuminating  ”  it  ;  this  growth  of  lumin¬ 
osity  in  the  feeling  is  the  beginning  of 
action  ;  1  but  the  action,  instead  of  being 
that  appropriate  to  an  external  object,  in 
which  case  we  have  before  us  a  datum  of 
the  physical  kind,  may  be  that  appropriate 
to  something  within  the  body  or  in  the 
brain — or  to  the  sensation  itself,  which  is 

1  Feelings  of  innervation  have  been  denied  by  psychologists  j 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  heightening  or  illumination  of  a 
visual  or  auditory  sensation  is  such  a  feeling. 

31 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

the  same  thing  :  and  in  that  case  we  have 
the  sensation  as  an  object  before  us.  For 
instance,  I  may  accommodate  for  yonder 
electric  light,  but,  while  doing  so,  tend  to 
react  (as  an  effect  of  the  attentive  height¬ 
ening)  towards  the  mere  state,  considered 
as  internal  to  myself  :  and  I  shall  then  be 
introspecting  the  light  sensation. 

But  now,  it  would  be  contrary  to  our 
whole  theory  to  suppose  that  such  ob¬ 
servation  is  a  direct  intuition  of  the  light 
sensation — as  if  we  had  miraculously  got 
outside  it  and  were  looking  at  it  as  observers. 
The  logic  of  our  doctrine  of  perception 
rather  indicates  that  what  has  happened 
is  that  we  have  constructed  for  ourselves 
a  datum,  which  is  a  datum  of  the  intellect  : 
that  we  have  formed  an  idea  of  the  light 
sensation,  which  must  be  distinguished 
from  the  light  sensation  itself  however  inti¬ 
mately  it  depends  upon  it  for  its  givenness, 
and  which  may  conceivably  misinform  us 
as  to  the  constitution  of  the  light  sensation 
itself.  The  degree  of  validity  of  the  in¬ 
formation  is  a  matter  to  be  looked  into. 

32 


Time  and  Space 

Even  in  observation  of  a  feeling  at  the 
moment  of  its  existence,  then,  there  is  no 
infallibility.  Cognition  is  still  a  forming 
of  ideas  about  the  object,  an  apprehension 
of  meanings  by  the  help  of  tendencies 
to  movement,  and  necessarily  limited  by 
the  poverty  and  inadequacy  of  these  re¬ 
actions.  For  example,  we  cannot  see  the 
feeling,  even  thus  simultaneously  cog¬ 
nized,  to  be  many,  except  so  far  as  we 
are  capable  of  reacting  separately  to  its 
parts.  Cognition  even  in  this  case  is  still 
mediate . 

If  we  cannot  directly  see  the  feeling 
to  be  many,  much  less  can  we  perceive  it 
to  be  one.  And,  owing  to  the  mediate 
character  of  the  observation,  we  are  subject 
to  illusion,  because  we  fail  to  distinguish 
between  the  datum  of  introspection  and 
the  object  introspected  ;  and,  transferring 
the  totality  which  is  a  character  of  the 
datum  to  the  object,  are  apt  to  suppose 
that  we  have  directly  perceived  it  to  be 
one.  This  is  one  of  the  fundamental 
illusions  of  metaphysics. 

33 


D 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

But  now,  having  disproved  the  unity 
of  the  self  (or,  to  speak  with  formal 
correctness,  of  the  portion  of  immediate 
experience  which  forms  the  self — for  a 
self  is  perhaps  in  strictness  relative  to  a 
not-self),  let  us  do  even-handed  justice  by 
looking  at  the  other  side  of  the  picture, 
and  recognizing  that  the  self  has  what  in 
contrast  to  existential  unity  may  be  called 
individuality ,  and  in  what  this  individuality 
consists.  It  consists  in  the  performance 
of  the  function  which  Kant  called  “  apper¬ 
ception  ”  —  but  which,  substituting  an 
English  for  the  German  word  (and  I 
think  at  the  same  time  a  correct  for  an 
erroneous  idea),  I  should  prefer  to  call 
apprehension — and  to  which  he  ascribed 
“synthetic  unity.”  Apperception,  or  rather 
apprehension,  is  the  function  by  which  a 
portion  of  immediate  experience  yields  a 
datum  :  in  a  word,  it  is  awareness. 

We  have  seen  that  the  immediate  ex¬ 
perience  forming  the  self  is  identical  with 
a  pattern  of  processes  in  the  nervous  system. 
What  is  a  pattern  ?  It  is  a  drawing,  a 

34 


Time  and  Space 

synthesis.  What  is  the  special  nature  of 
this  synthesis — what  are  the  elements,  and 
what  the  systematic  relation  ?  The  elements 
are  the  processes  in  particular  nerve-fibres, 
many  of  which  of  the  sensory  kind  have 
to  join  their  forces  to  evoke  processes  in  a 
group  of  motor  nerve-fibres — the  possible 
disproportion  in  number  on  each  side 
being  great,  according  to  the  width  or 
narrowness  of  the  stimulation  and  the 
width  or  narrowness  of  the  reaction.  Here 
is  a  “  synthetic  unity  ”  resident  in  matter.1 
And  it  is  a  synthetic  unity  of  apprehension, 
because  the  reaction  to  the  stimulation  is 
(if  the  case  we  are  considering  be  per¬ 
ception)  a  response  to  an  object  outside 
the  body.  The  mere  nerves,  we  may  say, 
apprehend  that  external  object  ;  and  an 
animal  that  was  all  nerves  and  no  feelings 
(like  Descartes’s  automatic  lower  animals) 
would  still  know.  But  he  would  not  be 
conscious.  For  this  it  is  necessary  that 
the  stuff  of  things  should  be  not  matter 

1  This  is  Prof.  Sherrington’s  “  integration,”  on  the  highest 
level. 


35 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

but  immediate  experience.  And  we  may 
see  in  this  truth  a  proof  that  our  analysis 
of  perception  into  an  immediate  experience 
that  is  bare  sense  and  a  datum  that  is  purely 
intellectual  was  correct. 

As  we  have  been  so  successful  with 
perception,  let  us  look  at  memory  (I  mean 
the  primary  kind  that  follows  immediately 
on  an  experience)  and  see  what  “  synthetic 
unity  ”  lies  in  it.  We  remember  (in  this 
primary  way)  because  effects,  after-vibra¬ 
tions  of  a  stimulation,  still  take  place  in  a 
group  of  fibres,  and  join  with  the  present 
stimulation  to  influence  reaction  ;  in  per¬ 
ceiving  a  motion,  for  instance,  the  vision 
of  previous  positions  of  the  object  overlaps 
upon  vision  of  its  present  position,  and 
causes  a  peculiar  blurring  which  is  the 
“  sense  ”  of  motion.  Thus,  as  bare  sensa¬ 
tion  is  the  matter  for  apprehending  a 
present  datum,  so  an  image  or  a  blurring 
in  sense  (for  I  think  there  are  two  cases) 
is  the  matter  for  apprehending  a  datum 
of  the  immediate  past.  Similarly  a  blurring 
caused  by  the  disparity  of  the  sensations 

36 


Time  and  Space 

from  the  two  retinae  is  the  basis,  the  mere 
sensible  matter,  for  the  perception  of  depth: 
distance  in  space  and  distance  in  time 
being  apprehensible  on  the  same  principle. 
Finally,  the  sense  of  meaning  is  due  to  a 
blurring  of  images,  the  particulars  meant 
being  too  distant  from  the  present  thought 
to  be  apprehended  distinctly. 

As  groups  of  fibres  may  still  vibrate 
and  cause  primary  memory,  so  they  may 
reinstate  their  vibrations  after  an  interval 
— if  nerve-processes  chance  to  be  repeated 
that  were  associated  with  them  before — 
as  a  pure  effect  of  habit,  and  cause  the 
phenomenon  of  memory  proper.  The 
“  association  ”  in  question  is  simply  the 
synthesis,  already  studied,  by  which 
stimulations  join  their  forces  to  produce 
a  reaction.1  In  all  cases,  what  causes  a 
datum  to  rise  before  the  mind  is  the 
character  of  the  total  process  as  a  response . 

The  physiology  of  cognition  thus  con- 

1  This  association,  in  view  of  its  effects,  is,  I  think,  by 
neurologists  called  registration. 

37 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

firms  our  view  that  the  attribution  of  unity 
to  immediate  experience  as  an  existence 
is  a  fallacy  ;  that  what  has  unity  is  solely 
the  Junction  of  immediate  experience  as 
(with  the  assistance  of  the  motor  reaction) 
bringing  before  us  a  datum.  This  fallacy 
has  had  far-reaching  and  disastrous  con¬ 
sequences.  It  is  the  source  of  two  erroneous 
systems  :  Monism  and  Monadism. 

As  respects  the  former,  let  us  consider 
the  statements  of  Mr.  Bradley.  And  we 
must  distinguish  his  view  of  awareness, 
that  is,  apprehension,  and  his  view  of 
immediate  experience.  As  to  the  first  of 
these,  his  thesis  is  a  peculiar  one  :  he  holds 
that  “  between  the  felt  subject  and  the 
object  [understand,  datum]  there  is  no 
relation  at  all  ”  (p.  195).  And  the  reason 
apparently  is,  that  “  there  is  emphatically 
no  experience  of  a  relation  ”  ( ibid .).  This 
of  course  is  idealism  :  unless  a  thing  is 
experienced  (as  distinct  from  experience) 
it  does  not  exist.  But  we  recognize  no 
such  principle  ;  we  hold  that  what  exists 
is  not  the  experienced  but  experience — 

38 


Time  and  Space 

or,  in  other  words,  not  the  object  as  such, 
i.e.  the  datum,  but  the  subject  (and  the 
world  of  which  the  subject  is  part). 

But  Mr.  Bradley  holds  that  the  subject, 
“  for  which  the  object  exists,  is  not  related 
to  it  and  yet  is  experienced  with  it  ” 
(p.  196).  In  fact,  he  holds  that  it  is  not 
related  to  it  because  he  holds  that  it  is 
experienced  with  it  ;  the  whole  view  is 
a  result  of  assuming  that  immediate  expe¬ 
rience  is  experience,  and  that  if  anything 
is  not  experienced  it  is  “  nothing  55  (p.  197 
— cf.  pp.  175,  193,  195).  Idealism  is 
applied  first  to  the  object  and  then  to 
the  subject,  and  then,  since  the  subject 
at  the  moment  when  it  acts  as  such  does 
not  happen  to  be  a  datum,  yet  to  deny 
it  then  would  be  carrying  scepticism  further 
than  is  convenient,  the  subject  is  declared 
to  be  experienced  in  a  different  sense  from 
that  in  which  the  object  (datum)  is  ex¬ 
perienced,  the  two  are  neither  frankly 
fused  together  nor  frankly  kept  apart, 
and  there  is  denied  to  be  a  relation  between 
them.  No  wonder  if  contradictions  such 

39 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

as  this  can  be  reconciled  only  in  the 
Absolute. 

Turning  now  to  Mr.  Bradley’s  view 
of  immediate  experience,  he  admits 
“  diversities  ”  in  feeling — but  no  relations. 
(He  means  by  this,  apparently,  that  there 
is  no  consciousness  of  relations.)  How 
there  can  be  diversities  without  things 
being  two  or  more,  I  do  not  understand  ; 
and  how,  being  two  or  more,  they  can 
also  be  “  one,”  within  the  bosom  of 
immediate  experience,  still  less — it  seems 
to  me  a  contradiction. 

He  admits  that  the  immediate  expe¬ 
rience  constituting  the  rest  of  the  world  is 
“ outside”  my  immediate  experience ;  and 
yet  holds  that  these,  again,  are  one — 
another  contradiction. 

If  my  immediate  experience  and  the 
rest  of  immediate  experience  were  held, 
besides  “  diversities,”  to  have  continuity — 
of  a  sort  to  be  investigated — there  would 
be  no  contradiction,  and  the  fact  that  one 
is  “  outside  ”  the  other  would  be  intelligible. 

Our  analysis  has  reached  a  point  where 

40 


Time  and  Space 

we  can  understand  the  source  of  these 
contradictions.  There  are  three  things  to 
be  distinguished  :  the  datum,  immediate 
experience,  and  the  relation  between  the 
two.  The  datum  (owing  to  the  synthesis) 
is  a  whole,  or  has  “  totality  ”  ;  immediate 
experience  is  a  continuum  ;  the  synthesis 
of  awareness,  or  glance  by  which  immediate 
experience  apprehends  the  datum,  alone 
has  unity.  When  these  three  are  properly 
kept  apart,  all  is  harmonious,  and  there 
is  no  contradiction.  But  when  awareness 
is  said  to  be  at  once  of  the  datum  and  of 
immediate  experience,  or  when  immediate 
experience  is  said  to  be  in  its  nature  aware¬ 
ness,  confusion  follows,  and,  as  a  result  of 
the  confusion,  contradiction.  The  error 
consists  in  confusing  the  unity  of  the 
glance  with  the  mere  continuity  of  im¬ 
mediate  experience. 

It  will  be  evident  that  Monadism  is 
involved  in  the  same  ruin  as  Monism.1 

1  I  hope,  in  these  criticisms  of  Mr.  Bradley  which  now  come 
to  an  end,  I  have  said  nothing  to  obscure  my  respect  for  him 
as  a  great  mind,  very  close  in  his  general  view  of  things  to  the 
truth,  though  his  monism  and  idealism  seem  to  me  wrong. 

41 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

Our  next  duty  is  to  ask  in  what  con¬ 
tinuity  consists.  I  am  content  to  accept 
the  explanations  of  Mr.  Russell  on  this 
point.  A  line  is  continuous  when  the 
series  of  points  composing  it  is  “  compact  ” 
— that  is,  when  between  any  two  points 
there  are  an  infinite  number  of  other 
points.  But  I  will  add  one  observation. 
Of  course  the  line  is  not  composed  merely 
of  the  infinitely  numerous  points  :  they 
must  have  a  certain  arrangement — as  the 
word  “  between  ”  shows. 

Continuity  will  apply  both  to  time 
and  to  space.  It  will  be  the  substitute 
for  existential  unity,  and  the  remedy 
for  all  discreteness.  It  will  be,  more¬ 
over,  the  basis  of  spatial  and  temporal 
relations. 

Confusion,  it  seems  to  me,  has  been 
brought  into  the  question  of  the  nature 
of  relations  by  not  distinguishing  physical 
from  logical  relations — relations  of  time 
and  space  from  relations  such  as  diversity, 
similarity,  sameness,  and  the  like.  The 
main  difference  between  them  is  that 

42 


Time  and  Space 

physical  relations  hold  between  concrete 
things,  while  logical  relations  hold  be¬ 
tween  the  abstract  characters  of  things. 
Thus  the  latter  are  essential,  while  the 
former  are  accidental.  That  is,  if  two 
characters  are  the  same  or  similar  or  dif¬ 
ferent,  they  could  not,  with  their  natures, 
be  otherwise — the  relations  are  “  inter¬ 
nal  ”  ;  while  two  things  which  are  distant 
from  each  other  might  equally  well,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  have  been  near,  or 
two  things  which  are  successive  might 
equally  well  have  been  simultaneous  — 
there  is  no  logical  bond  (though  there 
may  be  a  causal  bond)  between  their 
characters  and  their  position  in  time  and 
space,  and  the  relations  are  therefore 
“  external.” 

These  different  sorts  of  relation  bring 
their  terms  together  into  a  unity  in  quite 
different  senses.  A  logical  relation,  when 
it  is  most  unifying — as  in  the  case  of 
sameness,  or  of  similarity — involves  a  unity 
of  kind .  But  a  kind  is  not  an  existence  : 
it  is  only  a  logical  entity,  a  universal. 

43 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

Hence  this  sort  of  relation  cannot  make  the 
world  existentially  one. 

Does  a  physical  relation  join  its  terms 
into  a  unity  ?  It  joins  them  into  a  whole  : 
but  the  unity  of  a  whole  is  formal — it  is 
the  unity  of  an  arrangement.  It  is  not 
only  consistent  with,  but  requires,  the 
separate  existence  of  the  things  arranged. 
Thus  this  sort  of  relation  proves  existential 
plurality  rather  than  unity. 

Real  as  the  arrangement  is,  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  it  has  unity  except 
as  an  idea  before  the  mind.  If  this  is  so,  a 
relation  does  not  involve  “  an  underlying 
unity  and  an  inclusive  whole,”  but  only 
an  underlying  continuity  and  a  synthetic 
idea. 

I  will  set  down  my  own  conclusion 
about  this  matter.  On  the  one  hand,  I 
have  no  wish  to  deny,  but  rather  to  assert, 
the  reality  of  spatial  and  temporal  order. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  to  me  that 
this  order  is  ultimate — that  it  cannot  be 
explained  by  any  deeper-lying  unity,  but 
can  only  be  accepted. 

44 


Time  and  Space 

A  physical  relation  always  separates 
as  much  as  it  unites.  The  relation  of 
distance  between  two  points  in  a  line 
signifies  that  they  are  separated  by  an 
infinite  number  of  intervening  points.  On 
the  other  hand — in  virtue  of  the  con¬ 
tinuity — a  physical  relation  always  joins 
as  well  as  separates.  The  two  segments 
of  a  line  separated  by  a  point  are  in  such 
a  relation  as  to  form  one  line.  I  cannot 
agree  with  M.  Bergson,  therefore,  that 
if  the  time-line  were  divisible  that  would 
imply  a  rupture  of  its  continuity.  This 
view,  taken  with  his  idealistic  identification 
of  the  object  of  primary  memory  with  the 
datum,  is,  I  think,  responsible  for  his  pro¬ 
longing  the  past  into  the  present.  He 
absorbs  the  real  duration  into  the  datum  (of 
primary  memory) — in  such  wise  that  the 
past  is  not  lejt  behind .  This  is  surely  an 
error.  Time  is  continuous,  but  it  is  not 
for  that  reason  destitute  of  instants. 

M.  Bergson  maintains  that  time  and 
space  are  dissimilar,  and  that  to  treat  them 

45 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

as  alike  is  to  spatialize  time.  They  are 
alike  mathematically  at  least — if  it  were  not 
so,  motion  would  be  impossible.  Motion 
is  the  superposition  of  the  continuity  of 
time  (with  its  infinite  points  separating 
any  two  points)  upon  the  continuity  of 
space. 

Are  the  stretches  or  durations  of  time 
more  real  than  the  instants  ?  Every  duration 
is  composed  of  shorter  durations  ad  infinitum, 
which  cannot  exist  simultaneously  but  only 
successively.  Consequently  nothing  can 
occur  in  a  duration  as  such.  A  duration 
is  a  limited  series  of  instants,  concreted 
into  a  whole  by  a  mind  which  views  them 
after  or  before  the  fact.  In  M.  Bergson’s 
happy  phrase,  it  is  time  tout  fait,  not  time 
sefaisant .  It  can  form  a  whole  (something 
more  than  a  continuum)  only  because  the 
events  have  already  or  have  not  yet 
happened.  It  follows  that  events  can 
happen  only  in  instants.  Verbally,  of 
course,  it  takes  an  infinite  series  of  these, 
however  short,  to  make  an  event. 

What,  then,  is  an  instant  ?  It  is  a 

4  6 


Time  and  Space 

point  of  time  at  once  separating  and  joining 
the  past  and  the  future.  The  past  is  past, 
the  future  is  yet  to  come,  and  all  that  exists 
is  the  indivisible  present.  There  are  not 
three  times,  past,  present,  and  future,  of 
equal  reality,  but  only  one,  and  the  past 
and  future  are  as  such  unreal.  Reality 
is  nothing  but  one  ever-changing  present. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  present  contains 
change  within  itself — change,  like  dura¬ 
tion,  belongs  to  the  tout  fait,  not  to  the  se 
faisant — but  that  the  future,  when  it 
comes,  will  be  found  changed.  If  we  are 
to  account  for  this,  we  must  suppose  that 
present  reality  is  in  its  nature  Force  or 
Cause.  It  is  not  change,  but  the  principle 
or  source  of  change. 

I  know  not  what  physicists  will  say  to 
this,  but  it  seems  to  me  to  follow  from  our 
analysis  of  time.  For  physics  it  may  be 
necessary  to  assume  that  in  the  points  of 
space  there  are  points  of  aether  which 
continue  identical  through  time. 

I  see  no  reason  to  think  that  the  past 
is  preserved,  except  in  memory.  As 

47 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

memory  lapses,  it  seems  to  me  to  become  as 
completely  non-existent  as  the  future. 

Instead,  then,  of  time  being  more  real 
than  space,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  space 
is  more  real  than  time  :  or  rather  in  which 
matter  is  more  real  than  duration. 

Turning  now  to  space,  it  might  seem 
that  matter  (or  the  aether)  exists  in  the 
extensions  and  not  in  the  points.  But 
Leibniz  has  argued  cogently  that  whatever 
is  extended  is  a  multitude,  and  that  a 
multitude  presupposes  units  ;  and  since 
no  extension  however  short  can  be  a  unit 
— for  the  same  reason  that  no  duration 
can  happen  at  once — the  necessary  result 
is  that  the  units  of  matter  must  be  points. 

Recall  that  a  point  unites  as  well  as 
separates  ;  that  in  its  very  nature  it 
involves  position  ;  and  you  will  see  that 
it  is  no  more  inconsistent  with  continuity 
than  an  instant  of  time.  It  can  very  well 
bind  extensions  together.  A  point,  since 
it  must  have  position,  is  unthinkable  apart 
from  a  line.  And  a  line  is  unthinkable 

48 


Time  and  Space 

apart  from  a  plane,  and  a  plane  apart  from 
a  solid  ;  they  are  all  simply  abstractions 
from  space.  Just  as  space,  in  its  turn,  is 
an  abstraction  from  the  aether,  which  alone 
is  what  we  perceive. 

The  parallelism  of  space  and  time,  then, 
is  complete;  and  the  things  which  should 
not  be  put  on  the  same  plane  are  not  time 
and  space,  but  matter  and  temporo-spatial 
order.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  only 
matter  exists ,  and  order  is  of  the  nature  of 
truth.  For  only  matter  is  Force. 

But  matter  is  not  only  Force,  it  is  also 
Light.  I  do  not  mean  physical  light,  but 
the  light  that  lighteth  every  man  that 
cometh  into  the  world — the  light  of  nature, 
or  Sense.  We  denied  sensations  to  be 
experience,  but  we  did  not  deny  them 
to  be  experience,  that  is  (if  the  metaphor 
may  be  pardoned),  to  be  full  of  inner 
light.  This  is  a  hidden  light,  indeed  ;  it 
cannot  be  directly  seen  from  a  distance — 
no  man  can  feel  another’s  feelings.  But, 
because  unseen  to  the  outer  eye,  it  does 

49  E 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

not  less  truly  exist  ;  and  we  have  an  inner 
eye  (I  refer  to  introspection)  that  makes 
us  more  directly  aware  of  it. 

This  “  luminosity,5’  when  the  sensation 
is  used  for  cognition,  becomes  the  givenness 
of  the  object.  Thus  givenness  is  not  an 
intuition  of  things  in  themselves  —  we 
cannot  see  independently  of  the  light-rays 
— but  a  contemplation  of  things  by  means 
of  ideas. 

It  has  been  the  special  distinction  of 
modern  philosophy  to  suppose  that  the 
ideas  were  not  ideas  of  the  things  :  from 
which,  by  a  natural  reaction,  philosophers 
have  of  late  swung  to  the  opposite  extreme 
of  supposing  that  we  can  contemplate 
things  without  ideas.  Language  should 
have  shown  them  that  an  idea  is  necessarily 
the  idea  of  a  thing — and  not  least  so  when 
the  thing  is  real.  But  they  have  been 
prevented  from  seeing  this  by  the  fact 
that  they  had  no  belief. 


5° 


“  Ins  Innre  der  Natur 

Dringt  kein  erschaffner  Geist. 
Gliickselig, ,  wem  sie  nur 
Die  aussre  Sc  hale  weist.” 

Das  hod  ich  seit  Jahren  wiederholen , 
Ich  fiuche  drauj \  aber  verstohlen  ; 
Sage  mir  tausend  tausend  Male  : 

A  lies  gibt  sie  reichlich  und  gem  ; 
Natur  hat  we  der  Kern 
Noch  Sc  hale, 

Alles  ist  sie  mit  Einem  Male  ; 

Dich  priife  du  nur  allermeist , 

Ob  du  Kern  oder  Schale  seist. 

Ihr  folget  falscher  Spur — 

Denkt  nicht ,  wir  scherxen  ! 

Ist  nicht  der  Kern  der  Natur 
Men  sc  hen  im  Herzen  ? 


51 


CHAPTER  III 


Contemplation 

“  There  are  some  philosophers,”  says 
Hume,  “  who  imagine  we  are  every 
moment  intimately  conscious  of  what  we 
call  our  Self  ;  that  we  feel  its  existence 
and  its  continuance  in  existence.  .  .  .” 
But  he  goes  on,  mirabile  dictu ,  to  refuse 
to  identify  the  self  with  “  pain  and  pleasure, 
grief  and  joy,  passions  and  sensations  ” — 
clearly  because  he  failed  to  distinguish 
between  these  and  “  impressions  ”  (the 
impressions  we  have  of  them  or  the  im¬ 
pressions  they  give  us  of  the  external  world) 
— and  thus,  in  James’s  accurate  phrase,  to 
pour  out  the  child  with  the  bath.  And 
so  he  concludes  that  “  consequently  there 
is  no  such  idea.” 


53 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

I  hope  the  preceding  chapters  have 
made  it  clear  that  we  have  an  idea  of  self, 
and  what  that  idea  is.  Some  philosophers 
tell  us,  indeed,  that  the  idea  of  self  is  the 
idea  of  our  ideas  ;  or  the  idea  of  the 
awareness  by  which  we  have  ideas.  And 
from  that  basis  they  deduce,  by  the  most 
perfect  mathematical  logic,  that  Nature  is 
only  a  mental  construction,  a  conception  of 
classes  of  things,  and  that  they  themselves 
are  essentially  spirits,  at  least  momentary 
and  atomic  ones.  These  philosophers  may 
perhaps  perceive  clearly  that  that  is  what 
they  mean  by  themselves.  All  I  can  allow 
them  is  that  they  may  be  right  as  well  as 
I,  and  that  we  are  essentially  different  in 
this  particular. 

But  setting  aside  some  mathematical 
logicians  of  this  kind,  I  venture  to  affirm 
of  the  rest  of  mankind  that  they  are 
animals  :  that  they  have  selves  which  are 
inwardly  luminous,  and  consist  of  imme¬ 
diate  experience.  When  Gassendi  addresses 
Descartes  as  O  esprit ,  and  Descartes  retorts 
by  calling  him  O  chair ,  I  confess  that  my 

54 


Contemplation 

sympathies  are  with  Gassendi  ;  for  I  think 
that  the  flesh  is  not  as  fleshly  as  it 
seems. 

It  is  none  the  less  true  that  we  live  in 
a  world  of  matter.  Time  and  space  part 
us  from  other  selves,  and  also  from  in¬ 
animate  objects.  In  this  incurable  separa¬ 
tion  of  objects  from  the  percipient,  how 
shall  they  be  known  ?  We  grasp  at  the 
idea  of  an  immediate  intuition  ;  but 
Nature  could  not  give  it  us,  for  we  are 
dust.  What  she  has  done  is  to  permit 
us,  by  means  of  sense-organs,  to  picture 
external  things,  and  to  endow  us  with  a 
natural  trust  that  those  pictures  are  true. 
We  believe  upon  instinct,  which  is  the 
guide  of  life  to  every  healthy  animal. 

But  when  reason  awakes,  methodic 
doubt  asks  its  question  ;  and  finding  no 
immediate  answer,  contents  itself  tem¬ 
porarily  with  the  given.  Things  are  ideas. 
Their  causal  operation,  which  should 
feelingly  convince  us  that  they  are,  is 
interpreted  as  only  our  irrational  habit 
(as  if  instinct  could  be  anything  else  !). 

55 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

And  straightway,  turning  upon  itself,  the 
ego  declares  that  it  too  is  only  an  idea — 
and,  what  is  more,  a  false  one.  Or,  if 
it  exists,  its  being  consists  only  in  a 
spinning  of  ideas. 

It  is  now  the  turn  of  some  person  with 
a  little  more  instinct  for  reality,  but  still 
caught  in  the  net,  to  aver  that  these  ideas 
are  not  ideas  at  all,  but  things,  and  capable 
of  existing  when  no  one  is  perceiving  them. 
Since  things  when  they  are  perceived  are 
thus  perceived  without  consciousness  ;  they 
can  wander  off  at  their  own  sweet  will, 
and  still  be  percepta .  Consciousness  ac¬ 
cordingly  does  not  exist  ;  bodies  directly 
perceive  each  other.  And  this  converse 
of  material  things  with  material  things  is 
still  called  experience. 

Has  not  the  time  come  for  these  bodies 
to  wake  up — for  these  too  fleshly  philo¬ 
sophers  to  admit  that  man  is,  after  all, 
a  living  soul  ? 

The  function  by  which  we  hold  converse 
with  Reality — a  truly  spiritual  function, 

56 


Contemplation 

since  apprehension  is  of  its  essence — I  shall 
here  call  contemplation . 

Contemplation  has  two  forms,  according 
as  we  are  in  direct  or  in  indirect  relation 
to  the  truth  :  the  one  is  cognition,  the 
other  thought  or  reflection.  The  method 
of  thought  is  logic  ;  but  logic  requires 
premises,  and  it  is  cognition  that  furnishes 
them.  No  truths,  not  even  those  of 
mathematics  or  logic  itself,  have  any  other 
source  than  cognition. 

Cognition  is  a  matter  of  perception  or 
of  primary  memory  ;  the  two  being  so 
intimately  conjoined  that  it  is  difficult 
to  dissociate  them.  Memory  proper, 
secondary  memory,  is  already  a  kind  of 
reflection  :  it  is  the  re-viewing,  in  the 
mirror  of  a  later  state,  of  that  which  has 
before  been  viewed  in  cognition.  Associa¬ 
tion  of  ideas  (which  means  understanding, 
not  the  mere  juxtaposition  of  images)  is 
even  more  reflective  :  in  it  we  re-view  the 
relations  of  things,  as  in  secondary  memory 
we  re-view  the  things.  Reflection,  in  the 
everyday  sense,  is  marshalling  the  data 

57 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

re-viewed  according  to  their  similarities, 
and  perhaps  abstracting  the  similarities  ; 
but  it  is  still  essentially  a  re-viewing. 

The  science  of  these  similarities,  as  such, 
is  logic  ;  it  is  an  affair  of  classes.  But 
the  fact  that  these  similarities  can  be 
abstracted,  and  that  they  are  at  several 
removes  from  concrete  things,  should  not 
blind  us  to  the  further  fact  that  whatever 
is  true  of  them  is  true  because  it  was  true 
of  real  things  ;  or  make  us  fancy  that 
logic,  because  it  is  so  high  up  in  the  air, 
is  a  purely  aerial  science,  and  needs  no 
foundations  in  experience. 

What,  then,  are  the  foundations  of  logic 
in  experience  ? 

The  indispensable  foundation  of  logic, 
that  is  to  hold  good  of  anything,  is  the 
belief  in  real  things.  We  share  this  belief 
with  the  animals  ;  or  rather  some  of  us 
do.  All  men  act  as  if  they  believed  in 
matter  :  as  you  may  see  by  observing 
their  performances  at  the  table  and  at 
bed-time.  If  pots  and  pans  were  ideas, 

58 


Contemplation 

they  would  not  exist  when  unseen  and 
untouched,  nor  last  except  by  miracle  from 
one  perception  to  another.  And  everybody 
has  an  irresistible  belief  that  they  do  last. 

This  belief  implies  that  they  are  other 
than  our  act  of  perceiving  them,  and 
separate  from  that  act,  when  they  are 
given  ;  and  it  is  irrational  and  inconsistent 
to  hold  to  the  continuous  existence  of 
material  things,  after  you  have  identified 
them  with  data. 

But  reflection  upon  this  curious  state  of 
things — this  givenness  and  yet  not  given¬ 
ness,  this  irremediable  separateness — leads 
to  doubt  of  the  methodic  kind ;  and  the 
question  now  is,  what  satisfactions  can  be 
offered  to  the  critical  intellect. 

Now  in  truth,  in  a  situation  like  this, 
the  utmost  that  can  be  done  is  to  quiet 
the  mind,  by  showing  that  there  are  no 
good  reasons  to  the  contrary.  There  are 
no  reasons  for  believing  ;  but  also  there 
are  no  reasons  against  believing  ;  and 
therefore  our  course  may  be  left  to  the 
operation  of  instinct. 

59 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

Such  is  not,  however,  the  path  taken 
by  the  idealist.  Caught  fast  in  the  illusion 
that  the  datum  is  the  object,  and  perceiving 
that  mere  givenness  is  not  knowledge,  he 
gives  over  the  entire  function  of  knowing 
to  thought.  He  no  longer  sees  and 
touches  real  things,  but  only  thinks  them. 

What,  in  the  language  of  thought,  can 
believing  mean  ?  Says  Hume  in  the 
Appendix  to  his  Treatise  :  “  Either  the 
belief  is  some  new  idea,  such  as  that  of 
reality  or  existence  .  .  .”  When  you  cease 
to  believe,  the  thing  believed  in  of  course 
becomes  a  mere  idea.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  reality  or  existence,  but  only  the 
ideas  of  reality  or  existence  exist. 

So  a  contemporary  philosopher,  I  hear, 
was  accustomed  to  say  that  he  did  not 
know  what  “  existence  ”  meant.  It  means 
the  external  counterpart  of  belief.  It  is 
that,  precisely,  which  cannot  be  taken  up 
into  the  mere  idea — but  without  which 
the  latter  would  be  the  idea  of  nothing. 
Hence  it  cannot  be  educed  from  ideas,  or 
proved  by  means  of  them. 

60 


Contemplation 

It  is  folly,  then,  to  ask  a  reason  for 
believing — in  matter.  You  might  as  well 
ask  a  reason  for  eating  or  for  going  to 
sleep.  Human  life  rests  on  instinct,  and 
is  deranged  when  the  normal  operation 
of  instinct  is  arrested.  And  it  is  not  a 
rational  philosophy  but  an  irrational  one, 
a  philosophy  of  mere  reasoning,  that  would 
remove  the  foundations  on  which  reason 
rests. 

Where  belief  exists,  doubt  is  always 
possible  ;  you  can  suspend  this  animal 
function,  just  as  you  can  temporarily  cease 
to  breathe.  There  is  a  difference,  however, 
between  the  two  cases,  in  that  the  non¬ 
breather  is  rapidly  recalled  to  his  senses 
by  an  organic  need,  while  the  sceptic  may 
doubt  in  every  moment  of  philosophy  and 
believe  in  the  intervals  of  everyday  life, 
and,  through  the  confusion  of  objects  with 
data,  cheat  himself  into  believing  that 
his  doubts  are  as  genuine  as  if  he  acted 
upon  them.  If  apprehension  involves 
motor  activity,  and  belief  belongs  to  the 

6 1 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

active  side  of  our  nature,  as  our  theory 
teaches,  genuine  doubt  would  be  doubt 
that  issued  in  action.  What  would  this 
action  be  ?  It  would  be  of  a  negative  sort, 
and  consist  in  ceasing  to  perform  all  those 
acts  which  imply  the  existence  of  objects  : 
a  procedure  that  evidently  would  carry 
one  far.  But  modern  doubters  do  not 
really  doubt. 

They  theorize,  however,  as  if  they  did  ; 
and  it  will  be  our  duty,  shortly,  to  review 
their  sceptical  theories.  These  are  the 
maladies  to  which  reflection  is  exposed 
when  it  departs  from  the  solid  basis  of 
common  sense.  Let  us  prepare  ourselves 
for  studying  them  (lest  we  too  should 
catch  the  contagion)  by  noting  the  legiti¬ 
mate  satisfactions  which  healthy  thought 
about  existence  and  reality  can  offer  to 
the  mind. 

The  question  is  twofold  :  what  reasons 
are  there  for  thinking  that  things  really 
exist  (this  we  have  already  discussed),  and 
what  reasons  are  there  for  thinking  that 

62 


Contemplation 

perception,  or  introspection,  shows  them 
to  us  as  they  really  are  ? 

As  regards  this  second  question,  if  the 
datum  is  brought  before  us  by  the  use  of 
the  (visual)  sensation  as  a  sign  ;  and  if  the 
space  in  the  sensation,  and  consequently 
the  space  in  the  datum,  is  the  space  of 
reality  ;  it  would  follow — on  the  assump¬ 
tion  (which  is  that  of  everyday  life)  that 
space  is  everywhere  the  same — that  per¬ 
ception  gives  us  adequate  knowledge  of 
this  primary  quality  of  the  object.  How, 
then,  do  these  matters  stand  ? 

The  space  in  the  datum  is  not  the  same 
space  as  that  in  the  sensation,  in  so  far 
as  (i)  distance  is  not  contained  in  the 
latter,  (2)  the  magnitude  of  the  datum 
(i.e.  of  the  object  as  viewed)  is  variable 
with  the  distance,  whereas  the  magnitude 
of  the  sensation  is  fixed.  On  the  other 
hand,  space  in  the  sensation  is  the  same 
kind  of  thing  as  space  in  the  datum.  And 
our  reasoning  is  therefore  valid,  on  the 
condition  that  there  is  any  space  in  the 
sensation  at  all. 


63 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

This  throws  us  back  from  perception 
upon  introspection.  It  is  perfectly  obvious 
that  there  is  space  in  the  (visual)  sensation 
as  an  introspective  datum  :  but  is  the  real 
thing,  the  sensation  itself,  which  this  datum 
enables  us  to  cognize,  spatial  ?  Is  there 
any  reason  for  supposing  that  the  sensation, 
the  thing  itself,  is  in  any  respect  like  its 
appearance  to  the  mind  ? 

The  possibility  suddenly  opens  itself  up 
of  a  complete  disparity  between  datum 
and  thing  in  itself,  in  introspection  and 
consequently  in  perception.  And  modern 
thought  has  been  quick  to  seize  upon 
this  possibility,  and  by  what  is  called 
“  agnosticism,”  to  justify  its  preference 
for  ideas. 

The  answer,  I  think,  is  that  the  identity 
of  the  sensation  which  is  the  object  of 
introspection  and  the  sensation  which  is 
the  vehicle  of  the  introspective  datum 
guarantees  the  adequacy  of  this  datum  as 
a  rendering  of  the  real  thing.  In  other 
words,  the  sensation  cognized  and  the  sen¬ 
sation  that  cognizes  are  the  same  sensation. 

6  4 


Contemplation 

This  guarantees  the  objective  reality  of 
space  ;  but  it  also  guarantees  the  objective 
reality  of  that  fundamental  nature,  known 
as  feeling  or  immediate  experience,  which 
is  the  common  element  in  all  our  sensations. 
And  this,  to  my  mind,  is  the  ultimate 
rational  basis  of  the  validity  of  knowledge. 

Agnosticism,  then,  must  be  replaced  by 
Gnosticism,  as  Scepticism  was  replaced  by 
Belief. 

And  again,  I  hasten  to  add  that  this 
reasoning  is  not  ultimately  cogent,  or 
rather  coercive,  for  the  reason  that  it 
unfortunately  has  to  rest  on  premises.  In 
the  end  we  have  to  fall  back  on  Belief,  to 
maintain  the  value  of  knowledge  as  much 
as  to  maintain  the  fact  of  it. 

The  view  to  which  we  are  thus  led  is 
the  strange  one  that  the  self,  or  what  we 
are  accustomed  loosely  to  call  the  4 4  mind,”  1 
is  extended  in  three  dimensions  of  space. 

“  The  mind,”  said  Hume,  “  is  a  kind 

1  “  Mind  ”  is  better  used,  however,  for  the  self  as  including 
its  intellectual  functions. 


65 


F 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

of  theatre,  where  several  perceptions  suc¬ 
cessively  make  their  appearance.  .  .  .  There 
is  properly  no  simplicity  in  it  at  one  time, 
nor  identity  in  different  .  .  And  he 
adds  :  “  The  comparison  of  the  theatre 
must  not  mislead  us.  They  are  the  suc¬ 
cessive  perceptions  only,  that  constitute 
the  mind.”  In  this  he  was  not  wrong,  if 
by  perceptions  we  mean  apprehended  data; 
or  if  by  the  term  we  mean  sensations,  then 
it  is  true  that  it  is  the  successive  sensations 
only  that  constitute  the  s 'elf.  But  when 
he  goes  on  to  say,  “  Nor  have  we  the  most 
distant  notion  of  the  place  where  these 
scenes  are  represented,  or  of  the  materials 
of  which  it  is  composed,”  one  may  venture 
to  differ  with  him.  The  materials  are 
sensations  or  immediate  experiences,  and 
the  place  is  the  world.  Only  a  sceptic  has 
no  conception  of  these  things. 

A  theatre  is  all  very  well  for  special 
occasions,  when  you  want  to  look  on  and 
not  to  act  ;  but  for  ordinary  living  the 
better  dwelling-place  for  the  self  would  be 
a  house.  Let  it  have  a  number  of  rooms, 

66 


Contemplation 

corresponding  to  the  number  of  the  senses; 
and  let  the  occupant  not  be  continually 
engaged  merely  in  contemplating  the 
pictures  on  the  walls,  but  a  great  part 
of  the  time  be  looking  out  of  the  windows 
of  the  front  room — as  would  be  very 
necessary  if  he  had  enemies  lurking  in  the 
neighbourhood,  as  well  as  friends  to  expect, 
and  had  to  keep  a  sharp  watch  in  order  to 
avoid  unpleasant  surprises.  You  are  to 
understand  that  his  vision  of  things  without 
is  made  possible  by  the  light  that  streams  in 
at  the  windows,  and  not  due  solely  to  the 
interior  means  of  illumination.  The  diffi¬ 
culty  is  as  to  the  self  passing  from  room 
to  room.  But  this  is  a  very  large  self, 
who  lives  in  all  the  main  rooms  at  once  ; 
though  some  of  them  are  often  left  dark 
or  with  lights  turned  low,  while  the  back 
parts  of  the  house  are  never  visited. 

This  is  an  attempt  to  express  in  terms 
of  vision  a  situation  which  includes  vision 
as  one  of  its  parts,  and  must  in  the  end 
break  down.  But  —  allowing  for  the 
differences — it  may  serve  to  make  clear 

67 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

the  conception  of  a  tridimensional  self, 
assailed  by  stimuli  from  without  that  affect 
it  because  it  feels,  and  that  give  it  per¬ 
ceptions  of  external  things  because  of  its 
attention. 

So  that,  far  from  having  no  idea  of 
“  the  place  where  these  scenes  are  enacted,5’ 
we  know  quite  well  that  we  live  in  the 
midst  of  a  partly  hostile  world — or,  if  you 
prefer  the  simile  of  the  theatre,  that  we 
own  a  private  box  with  an  ante-room  or 
two,  and  that  the  rest  of  the  theatre  is 
mere  environment.  If  we  look  at  things  in 
this  modest  way,  the  simile  of  the  theatre 
will  not  deceive  us. 

Our  ideas,  as  contrasted  with  our  per¬ 
ceptions,  are  a  sort  of  (private)  theatre, 
where  the  most  extravagant  scenes  are 
sometimes  presented.  Hume  was  perhaps 
not  sufficiently  alive  to  the  difference 
between  the  two. 

Such,  then,  is,  according  to  our  theory, 
the  basis  of  valid  thinking.  Now  thought 
involves  a  detaching  of  the  fact  known  in 

68 


Contemplation 

cognition  from  the  present  instance,  and 
an  application  of  it  to  other  instances — 
it  involves  generalization .  Hence  it  is 
easy  (for  an  idealist)  to  suppose  that  this 
detaching  and  extension  is  the  true  process 
of  knowing  ;  and  to  deny  cognition  or 
direct  experience  to  be  knowing.  But  it 
is  perverse  to  deny  the  name  of  knowledge 
to  the  process  in  which  knowledge  is  first 
acquired.  We  must  therefore  distinguish 
sharply  between  knowledge  of  particular 
instances  by  acquaintance,  and  knowledge 
of  instances  in  general  by  inference  there¬ 
from —  between  original  and  reflective 
knowing  ;  and  make  clear  to  ourselves 
that  in  the  latter  what  is  known  is  not  mere 
data  (or  “  sensations  ”)  but,  still,  real 
things,  though  these  things  are  now  future 
or  eventual. 

It  should  next  be  noted  that  trustful 
cognition  supplies  both  the  terms  and  the 
relations  which  are  used  in  thought — since 
we  see,  for  example,  the  distance  or  the 
relative  magnitude  of  things  as  much  as 
we  see  the  things.  To  express  what  we 

69 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

see,  to  be  sure,  thought  and  language  are 
necessary  ;  but  it  is  not  thought,  any  more 
than  it  is  language,  that  originally  appre¬ 
hends  what  is  expressed. 

From  a  mere  datum,  simply  as  a  datum, 
nothing  can  be  inferred  :  from  a  datum 
taken  as  a  revelation  of  one  part  of  a  real 
world,  inferences  can  be  drawn  to  other 
parts  of  that  world.  In  drawing  them, 
we  rely  throughout  on  the  instinct  which 
prompts  us  to  assume  a  real  and  continuous 
world,  as  well  as  on  the  habits  of  association 
which  past  experience  has  taught  us  to 
regard  as  representing  the  connections  in 
that  world.  Thus  thought,  no  less  than 
cognition,  presupposes  the  body  with  its 
instincts. 

After  this  expose  of  the  bases  of  logic 
in  theory  of  knowledge,  we  can  be  brief 
with  the  maladies  of  thought,  which  are 
not  affections  of  logic  proper  but  only  of 
logic  as  a  substitute  for  metaphysics. 

When  real  things  are  replaced  by  ideas, 
relations  between  ideas  acquire  an  exist- 

70 


Contemplation 

ential  value  ;  and  different  theories  of  the 
universe  emerge,  according  as  relations  are 
regarded  as  more  important  than  terms 
(so  that  all  relations  become  “  internal,” 
or  constitutive  of  their  terms),  or  terms  as 
more  important  than  relations  (so  that  all 
relations  are  “  external  ”)  ;  or,  again,  ac¬ 
cording  as  the  intellect  is  regarded  as  the 
principle  of  their  union  into  the  proposition, 
or  this  union  is  attributed  to  the  will. 
These  four  diseases  may  be  called  respect¬ 
ively  universalism ,  atomism ,  intellectualism , 
and  voluntarism .  They  all  are  varieties  of 
one  fundamental  ailment,  scepticism ,  or  the 
disbelief  in  real  things. 

i.  Universalism  is  the  malady  of  the 
idealistic  monists.  They  attribute  an  ex¬ 
aggerated  value  to  what  is  general,  and 
even  conceive  generality  as  identical  with 
existence.  Plato  was  the  first  great  uni- 
versalist,  and  Hegel  the  last.  For  Hegel 
and  his  followers,  every  relation  is  “  an 
underlying  unity  and  an  inclusive  whole.” 
The  self  has  unity  in  order  that  it  may 
think  relations.  The  transcendence  of 

7i 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

knowledge  is  explained  by  a  universal 
uniting  the  object  and  (not  the  thought  of 
it,  but)  the  thinker,  apparently  into  a 
single  existence  ;  as  if  you  could  not 
think  of  a  thing  and  still  keep  separate 
from  it.  The  tangle  into  which  this  gets 
one,  when  one  comes  to  consider  the 
relation  between  one’s  self  and  the  rest  of 
immediate  experience,  needs  no  insisting 
on  :  we  are  alternately  told  that  (the  rest 
of)  the  world  is  “  outside  ”  us,  and  that 
we  are  one  with  it  ;  that  persons  exclude 
each  other,  and  that  they  form  a  unity. 
The  monist  is  forbidden,  on  principle,  to 
recognize  that  externality  of  persons  to 
persons  and  of  things  to  things  which  is 
the  patent  fact.  And  this  because  — 
besides  being  an  idealist — he  has  confused 
continuity  with  unity. 

To  distinguish  these  two  is  the  first 
condition  of  cure.  But  the  idealism  needs 
quite  as  urgently  to  be  corrected.  One  is 
surprised,  in  looking  over  text-books  of 
logic,  to  find  so  much  about  propositions 
and  so  little  about  terms.  This  is  simply 

72 


Contemplation 

German  idealism  :  if  single  data  reveal  no 
reality,  reality  must  lie  in  relations,  and 
consist  in  the  fact  that  the  propositions 
asserting  them  are  something  we  are 
“  obliged  to  think.”  The  curious  thing 
is  that,  while  perceiving  this  obligation, 
the  idealists  imagine  that  it  comes  from 
inside  them  ;  in  consistency  with  their 
principles,  they  recognize  the  objective 
constraint,  but  deny  the  constraining  object. 

2.  Atomism,  as  a  metaphysical  doctrine, 
represents  a  reaction  to  the  opposite 
extreme.  It  is  now  the  terms  that  are 
magnified,  the  relations  that  are  mini¬ 
mized  and  externalized.  Continuity  is 
recognized  in  name,  but  abolished  in 
fact  ;  for  the  only  existences  admitted  are 
separate  data,  and  the  temporal  and  spatial 
relations  that  should  join  things  into  a 
world  are  conceived  as  only  ideas  in  the  mind. 

The  consequence  of  these  beginnings 
is  that  everything  becomes  “  loose  and 
separate  ”  ;  so  loose  and  separate  that  the 
very  existence  of  a  Universe  is  denied. 
And  the  human  subject,  far  from  being 

73 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

a  portion  of  immediate  experience  capable 
of  conducting  a  synthesis,  flies  apart  into 
a  vast  number  of  views — between  which, 
again,  there  is  no  real  connection  but  only 
a  connection  thought  of  by  the  mind. 
Material  objects  are  composed  of  the  same 
views  that  compose  the  self,  only  differ¬ 
ently  arranged.  An  electron  is  no  single 
thing — it  is  a  sum  of  the  infinite  number  of 
effects  which  it  produces  at  other  points 
than  that  at  which  it  is. 

Meanwhile  this  atomism  does  valuable 
service  by  insisting  on  the  particularity 
of  data.  If  its  particulars  were  only  facts 
— in  a  world  in  which  things  are  done ,  and 
not  in  the  realm  of  essence  where  nothing 
ever  happens — this  aspect  of  the  doctrine 
would  be  true.  But,  unbeknown  to  him¬ 
self,  the  neo-realist  is  still  an  idealist :  despite 
his  common-sense  conviction  that  things 
exist  continuously,  the  things  he  has  his  eye 
on  are  the  merest  visions,  for  they  are  data, 
which  we  have  seen  to  be  fabrications  of  the 
intellect.  They  are  such  stuff  as  dreams 
are  made  of,  except  as  realized  in  things. 

74 


Contemplation 

This  brings  us  to  the  third  disease — 
for  the  atomist  is  often  at  the  same  time 
an  intellectualist. 

3.  Intellectualism  is  the  view  that 
objects  are  not  even  ideas  of  the  primary 
kind,  that  is,  data  of  perception,  but  are 
constructions  made  by  manipulating  these 
ideas  and  asserting  relations  between  them. 
It  is  the  advance  made  by  the  post-Kantians 
upon  Berkeley  and  Hume.  It  is  also  the 
tardy  revenge  taken  by  reality  for  the 
original  departure  from  common  sense  ; 
since  actual  living  with  ideas  proves  that 
they  are  not  objects,  and  particularly  not 
the  objects  of  physical  science,  and,  if 
things  are  not  real,  they  can  only  be 
fabrications  spun  out  of  sense  -  data,  or, 
to  designate  a  German  thing  by  a  German 
word,  Hirngespinnste.  The  fact  that  these 
Hirngespinnste  are  inevitable  and  logical, 
that  they  are  something  we  are  “  obliged 
to  think,”  in  no  way  removes  them  from 
the  category  of  unrealities,  since  the  same 
is  true  of  the  delusions  of  the  mad. 

Thus  the  discoveries  of  modern  science, 

75 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

which  are  the  surest  and  most  exact  know¬ 
ledge  humanity  possesses,  become  (in  theory 
— oh,  not  in  practice)  divagations,  while 
the  truth  of  things  is  found  in  dumb  sense  : 
and  that  sense  not  the  immediate  experience 
that  constitutes  the  external  thing,  but  the 
immediate  experience  that  constitutes  me. 
This  is  German  Egotism.  It  is,  as  will 
be  seen,  the  complete  inversion  of  Reality 
— it  is  the  world  turned  inside  out  like  a 
glove. 

And  then,  in  mitigation  of  this  view, 
we  are  told  that  what  urges  us  to  act  as  if 
all  these  things  were  not  true — to  behave 
as  if  there  were  objects  outside  us,  and  as 
if  they  had  a  proper  force  that  deserved 
our  respect — is  “  utility,”  or  the  needs  of 
practical  life.  Might  it  not  be  in  the 
strict  spirit  of  this  philosophy  to  carry  the 
principle  a  little  farther,  and  reason  that 
it  is  useful  and  necessary  to  practical  life 
to  consider  that  this  philosophy  is  not  true  ? 

4.  Every  perversion  produces  a  reaction, 
and  the  reaction  induced  by  intellectualism 
—  particularly  in  America  —  has  been 

7  6 


Contemplation 

towards  the  exclusive  recognition  of  the 
practical.  Utility  is  to  be  henceforth  the 
sole  test  of  thought  and  action.  There 
are  no  real  things,  distinct  from  sensations  ; 
the  world  is  wholly  a  creation  of  the 
judgement  ;  nothing  exists  apart  from 
this  judgement — not  even  the  past,  when 
that  is  what  we  judge  about — except  (for 
this  is  useful)  the  future,  as  a  means  of 
verification.  If  you  should  chance,  in  that 
future,  to  ask  yourself  what  it  was  you  were 
verifying,  I  suppose  the  appeal  would  be 
to  a  more  distant  future  ;  and  so  on. 
Meanwhile  the  content,  the  act,  and  the 
subject  of  your  judgement  are  all  contained, 
without  distinction,  within  your  present 
moment  of  sense. 

The  mere  statement  of  this  view  shows 
sufficiently  how  inarticulate  and  dumbly 
sensuous  modern  philosophy  has  now 
become.  The  climax  of  the  movement 
is  reached  in  “  behaviourism, ”  or  the 
theory  that  we  have  no  minds  but  are 
simply  bodies  moving.  All  the  resources 
of  modern  science  are  employed  to  prove 

77 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

how  true  it  is  that  we  are  bodies  moving, 
and  how  sufficient  that  hypothesis  is  to 
explain  everything  about  us.  And  it  does 
explain  everything  but  our  feelings — 
everything  but  ourselves. 

If — to  point  the  lesson  of  this  review — 
there  is  to  be  such  a  thing  as  contemplation, 
raising  us  above  the  mere  feelings  that 
form  the  substance  of  the  body  and  taking 
us  out  of  ourselves,  we  must  seek  it  in  the 
use  of  our  minds,  in  apprehension  and 
belief.  It  is  by  believing  what  we  apprehend 
that  we  contemplate  Reality  originally,  in 
perception ;  it  is  by  continuing,  in  reflec¬ 
tion,  this  healthy  belief  that  we  shall  be 
led  to  the  contemplation  of  Truth. 

The  various  logics  are  all  one-sidednesses 
— due  to  an  over-insistence  on  some  one 
aspect  of  the  facts.  Universals,  or  par¬ 
ticulars,  or  relations,  or  sensible  terms,  are 
magnified  into  an  importance  out  of  all 
proportion  to  their  merits.  It  takes  all 
kinds  of  logical  elements  to  make  a  world. 


78 


Qrdiamur  igitur  a  sensibus  :  quorum  ita  clara  judicia  et 
certa  sunt ,  ut  si  optio  naturae  nostrae  detur ,  et  ab  ea  deus  aliqui 
requirat ,  contentane  sit  suis  integris  incorruptisque  sensibusy 
an  postulet  melius  aliquid  ;  non  videamy  quid  quaerat  amplius. 
Neque  vero  hoc  loco  exspectandum  est ,  dum  de  remo  injlexo, 
aut  de  collo  columbae  respondeam :  non  enim  is  sumy  quiy 
quidquid  videtur ,  tale  dicam  esse ,  quale  videatur. 

Nam  quum  vim ,  quae  esset  in  sensibus ,  explicabamus,  simul 
illud  aperiebatur ,  comprehendi  multa  et  percipi  sensibus  ;  quod 
fieri  sine  assensione  non  potest. 


79 


CHAPTER  IV 

Life 

The  reader  will  wish  to  know  the  bearing 
of  this  theory  of  knowledge  on  life  and 
conduct. 

We  are  not  merely  contemplative  but 
active  beings,  and  one  of  the  greatest  faults 
of  modern  philosophy  has  lain  in  ignoring 
or  subordinating  this  fact.  Our  doctrine, 
according  to  which  there  is  no  cognition 
or  consciousness  but  by  grace  of  an  active 
tendency — in  such  wise  that  knowing  and 
willing  are  two  sides  of  one  occurrence- 
promises  both  to  redress  the  balance  and 
to  hold  it  even. 

A  new  day  has  dawned  for  psychology 
with  the  recognition  that  instinct  is  more 
fundamental  in  the  mind  than  intelligence, 
and  the  true  principle  of  mental  division. 

81  G 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

And  with  that,  a  host  of  queer  phenomena — 
hysterias,  alterations  of  personality,  splittings 
— that  were  riddles  to  previous  psychologists, 
have  become  intelligible  and,  what  is  more 
important,  curable.  Our  philosophy  is  in 
complete  accord  with  this  development. 

A  fundamental  conception  in  the  ex¬ 
planation  of  what  we  may  call  Freudian 
phenomena  is  that  of  the  “  complex.” 
What  is  a  complex  ?  It  is  a  group  of 
ideas  bound  together  by  synthesis  and 
possessing  a  common  motor  tendency. 
What  has  bound  them  together  ?  The 
motor  tendency.  A  fact  has  been  dis¬ 
covered  to  be  the  sign  of  another  fact, 
to  which  the  motor  tendency  was  instinct¬ 
ively  attached.  The  new  fact  has  thus 
become  equally  interesting  and  exciting 
with  the  old.  It  irresistibly  commands 
the  attention. 

Now  attention,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the 
heightening  of  a  sensation  ;  but  what  we 
have  yet  to  note  is  the  motor  significance 
of  this  heightening.  Psychologists  be¬ 
came  convinced  that  there  were  no  such 

82 


Life 


things  as  “  feelings  of  innervation  ” — but 
it  was  because  they  looked  for  these  feelings 
as  separate  states,  on  a  footing  with  and 
subsequent  to  visual  and  other  sensations  : 
in  truth,  the  heightening,  in  which  atten¬ 
tion  introspectively  consists,  is  the  feeling 
of  innervation.  It  is  the  sense  of  the  in¬ 
coming  nerve  -  currents  gripping  us  and 
preparing  to  elicit  a  movement. 

And  we  do  this  for  one  set  of  impressions 
rather  than  for  another,  because  the  former 
set  interests  us — which  means,  appeals  to 
a  congenital  tendency,  or  instinct .  Different 
things  interest  different  people;  the  balance 
of  instincts  in  particular  human  beings  (and 
nations !)  is  variously  adjusted,  and  what  is 
one  man’s  food  (to  put  it  rather  strongly) 
is  another  man’s  poison.  The  instincts 
clash — particularly  the  personal  and  the 
social  instincts — and  through  their  clashing 
syntheses  originate  and  entail  complexes, 
which  prove  particularly  poisonous  to  in¬ 
dividuals,  even  disabling  them  for  life  or 
rending  their  minds  asunder. 

Now  the  cure  of  these  morbid  conditions 

83 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

lies  in  intelligence  :  primarily  on  the  part 
of  the  sufferer,  but  secondarily,  and  as  a 
means  thereto,  on  the  part  of  his  discerning 
physician.  The  importance  of  the  psychic 
element  in  medicine  has  been  overlooked, 
owing  to  the  intellectualistic  and  material¬ 
istic  tendencies  of  the  age,  but,  fortunately 
for  suffering  humanity,  is  beginning  to  be 
recognized. 

A  Freudian  complex  is  a  group  of 
sensations  tied  up  badly  by  the  synthetic 
unity  of  apprehension,  in  such  wise  that 
the  response  is  an  inappropriate  one.  The 
ill  of  the  complex  is  in  its  persistence,  and 
this  is  the  work  of  what  we  loosely  call 
“  memory, ”  but  what  might  better  be 
called  registration  and  subsequent  retention. 
In  a  word,  complexes  are  (bad)  habits. 

It  may  not  be  superfluous  to  say  a  word 
here  as  to  the  relation  of  our  theory  to 
habit.  Habit  seems  to  involve  the  material¬ 
izing  of  intelligence — for  we  can  form  the 
most  intelligent  and  exquisite  habits — and 
so  to  contradict  the  definition  of  substance 

84 


Life 


as  feeling.  But  when  we  defined  substance 
as  feeling,  we  did  not  mean  human  feeling 
exclusively — as  if  all  Nature  were  con¬ 
tinually  weeping  and  rejoicing.  Matter 
is  now  said  to  be  composed  of  electrons, 
and  electrons  are  thought  to  be  not  im¬ 
probably  whirlpools  in  the  aether :  if,  then, 
both  the  nerve-impulses  and  the  channels 
through  which  they  course  can  consist  (for 
the  physicist)  of  moving  aether,  they  can 
both  consist  (for  the  metaphysician)  of 
points  of  feeling  that  are  points  of  force. 

The  next  thing  in  life  to  which  our 
theory  has  an  obvious  relation  is  the  sense 
of  beauty  :  for  there  would  be  no  such 
thing  as  beauty  if  the  self  were  not  com¬ 
posed  of  sense. 

As  comfort  is  the  exteriorization  of  the 
pleasure  caused  in  us  by  the  harmonious 
working  of  our  organs,  so  that  we  speak 
of  a  comfortable  room  or  of  a  comfortable 
bed,  so  beauty  is  the  exteriorization  of  the 
pleasures  due  to  the  harmonious  working 
of  the  nervous  system  itself,  particularly 

85 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

in  its  higher  activities  of  sight,  hearing, 
and  imagination. 

Music  may  be  described  as  a  pattern  of 
sounds  that  please  us  by  their  harmony. 
In  listening  to  it,  there  is  something  that 
may  be  called  “  expectation  ”  and  “  ful¬ 
filment  ”  ;  but  it  is  not  the  looking  back 
or  looking  forward  that  pleases  us,  still 
less  the  perception  of  relations  :  the  plea¬ 
sure  lies  in  the  successive  states  of  sound, 
formed  as  these  are  by  the  after-effects  of 
past  notes  overlapping  upon  and  blending 
with  present  ones,  and  inheres  in  them 
partly  because  they  are  nicely  adapted  to 
the  capacities  of  the  organ,  and  employ 
without  exhausting  it,  partly  because  the 
attention  is  prepared  for  them  by  the 
rhythm  and  the  recurrences. 

Rhythm  is  an  alternation  of  changes 
such  that  the  nervous  system  finds  it  easy 
to  execute  it — executes  it  with  a  minimum 
of  thwartings  and  interferings.  The  recur¬ 
rences  must  be  with  modifications,  that 
stimulate  the  attention  and  maintain  the 
interest. 


86 


Life 

Keenly  pleasant  as  are  the  sounds,  the 
synthesis  of  them  gives  rise  to  a  new 
beauty — -a  mysterious  meaning, .  Is  this 
produced  by  direct  physical  action,  or  by 
suggestion  ?  Doubtless  by  both.  Through 
its  rhythm,  pace,  and  accent  music  calls 
forth  in  us  the  bodily  reverberations  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  different  emotions  ;  through 
its  inflections  and  cadences,  it  -  awakens 
faint  memories  drawn  from  all  our  past 
experience  with  sounds,  from  the  emotions 
they  have  aroused  in  us,  and  the  emotions 
we  have  expressed  by  their  means — and 
were  it  not  for  these  echoes  of  universal 
emotional  experience,  by  which  feeling 
divorced  from  thought  is  made  an  object 
of  contemplation,  it  would  not  be  the 
enthralling  thing  it  is. 

Poetry,  apart  from  the  noble  meaning, 
is  of  course  word-music.  Here,  too,  there 
is  a  pattern  with  variations.  Rhythm 
plays  its  fundamental  part  ;  and  its  effect 
is  heightened  by  alliteration  and  assonance. 
The  principle  of  these  seems  to  be  that  a 
nervous  synthesis — perhaps  the  synthesis 

87 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

of  auditory  images  with  vocal  movements 
• — is  more  easily  executed  again,  while 
still  fresh  in  the  (primary)  memory,  than  a 
new  synthesis  :  hence  the  familiar  pheno¬ 
menon  of  the  recurrence  of  a  vowel  or 
consonant  after  an  interval,  and  its  recur¬ 
rence  again  after  a  slightly  longer  interval 
— in  what  might  be  called  a  triplet.  The 
rhythmic  recurrence  of  alliteration  and 
assonance  together  is  rhyme. 

But  what  would  poetry  be  without  its 
images,  and  without  its  echoes  of  our 
emotional  experience  ?  This  has  left  in 
us  tendencies  to  welcome  and  reject,  to 
assent  or  dissent,  and  in  proportion  as 
what  is  said  suggests  a  charming  image  or 
appeals  to  a  profound  tendency  of  reflec¬ 
tion,  it  finds  our  attention  predisposed  in 
its  favour,  and  takes  us  whither  we  would 
gladly  go. 

The  pleasure  of  poetry  is  thus  a  highly 
compound  one :  each  added  joy — the 
rhythm,  the  alliteration  and  assonance,  the 
smoothness  of  the  vocalization,  the  appro¬ 
priateness  of  the  diction,  and  above  all, 

88 


Life 

the  nobility  or  charm  of  the  thought — 
pushes  the  sensitive  nerve,  till  jointly  they 
awaken  in  the  mind  a  rare  and  exquisite 
delight. 

Is  not  architecture  a  sort  of  visual 
music — in  which  the  proportion  of  lines 
takes  the  place  of  the  harmony  of  simul¬ 
taneous  sounds,  while  recurrences  and  a 
certain  rhythm  make  synthesis  easy  as  the 
eye  passes  from  point  to  point  ?  It  seems 
to  me  that  facilitated  vision  is  a  main  part 
of  the  secret  of  architectural  beauty,  and 
that  to  lay  all  the  weight  on  suggestions  of 
movement,  pressure,  and  strain,  important 
as  these  are,  is  to  forget  that  our  enjoyment 
of  it  is,  after  all,  primarily  a  pleasure  of 
seeing. 

If  beauty  is  essential  to  art,  and  depends 
upon  feeling  or  sense,  art  cannot  be  mere 
expression  ;  though  it  is  natural  that  a 
philosophy  which  believes  only  in  ideas, 
and  explains  everything  by  ideas,  should 
think  so.  There  must  be  agreeable  in¬ 
ternal  sensations  to  inspire  and  justify  the 

89 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

expression  :  otherwise  there  is  no  beauty, 
and  only  the  empty  simulacrum  of  art. 

Things,  then,  are  not  beautiful  in  them¬ 
selves.  They  are  beautiful  only  as  appear¬ 
ances,  and  their  beauty  is  a  reflection  of 
our  own  inner  life. 

It  is  the  inner  life  of  sense  in  us  that 
makes  us  judge  things  to  be  good  or  bad. 
A  good  breakfast,  for  instance,  and  still 
more  a  good  egg,  is  so,  evidently,  relatively 
to  our  sensation  ;  and  I  see  no  reason  why 
a  good  and  a  bad  man  should  not  have 
been  originally  distinguished  in  the  same 
way.  A  good  man  is  a  man  who  does  me 
good,  a  bad  man  one  who  hurts  my 
feelings  or  thwarts  my  impulses.  Of 
course  I  am  also  a  bad  man  if  I  hurt  or 
thwart  his. 

This  suggests  an  important  ethical  truth: 
that,  as  it  takes  an  object  and  an  auditor, 
spectator,  or  reader  for  anything  to  be 
beautiful  or  ugly,  so  goodness  and  badness 
imply  two  persons,  an  agent  and  (as  we 
may  call  him)  a  patient.  In  other  words, 

90 


Life 


morality  is  essentially  a  relation  of  human 
beings  to  one  another.  As  Kant  would 
have  put  it,  society  is  the  condition  of  the 
possibility  of  this  form  of  experience. 

Have  we  relations  of  society  with 
Nature  ?  Of  a  kind.  Nature  is  perfect 
rectitude  (of  a  non  -  moral  sort)  :  the 
straightness  of  straight  lines  is  the  type 
of  her  behaviour.  But  Nature  is  inhuman, 
and  our  true  associates  are  our  fellow- 
men. 

Unfortunately  too  many  of  them  have 
something  of  the  inhumanity  of  Nature  ; 
and  here  is  where  the  other  side  of  human 
nature — intelligence — comes  in.  If  in¬ 
telligence,  as  we  saw,  can  resolve  Freudian 
complexes,  perhaps  it  may  resolve  those 
other  complexes,  such  as  nationality, 
sovereignty,  imperialism,  that  make  men 
political  enemies.  Good  will,  by  com¬ 
parison,  good  and  necessary  as  it  is,  seems 
a  drug  in  the  market ;  and  if  the  situa¬ 
tion  is  to  be  saved,  it  must  be  by  intelli¬ 
gence.  Intelligence  is  profitable  for  all 
things  (I  need  not  enumerate  them)  ;  nor 

9i 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

is  this  a  misquotation,  for  intelligence  is 
godliness. 

What  is  chiefly  needed  for  practical 
life  is  an  intelligence  of  the  instincts  and 
needs  of  other  people  (of  all  the  people 
concerned)  ;  a  complete  openness  to  the 
immediate  experience  that  constitutes  them 
— as  great  as  our  openness  to  that  which 
constitutes  us.  An  impetuous  doing, 
without  intelligence,  is  the  least  moral  of 
things.  Why  should  we  do  without  our 
minds  ? 

Nor  is  a  man  of  sense  necessarily  without 
conscience.  What  is  conscience  ?  It  is 
the  awareness  of  the  harmony  (or  dis¬ 
harmony)  of  our  instincts,  especially  of 
the  personal  with  the  social  ones  ;  without 
a  perfect  synthesis  of  which  we  cannot  be 
happy.  And  this  defines  happiness,  which 
(for  all,  and  not  for  merely  one)  is  the  goal 
of  morals. 

The  reader  will  wish  to  know  the 
bearing  of  our  doctrine  on  free  will. 

It  seems  to,  and  I  think  does,  involve 

92 


Life 


determinism.  But  we  are  subject  in  this 
matter  to  a  double  illusion  :  that  deter¬ 
minism  is  inconsistent  with  the  efficacy  of 
the  self,  and  that  it  precludes  novelty .  It 
can  be  shown  that  neither  of  these  things 
is  true. 

As  to  the  first,  the  view  that  the  self 
is  composed  of  point  -  instants  of  force, 
which  are  a  part  of  the  forces  of  Nature, 
far  from  being  inimical  to  efficacy,  ensures 
it.  The  identification  of  the  self  with  a 
pattern  of  processes  in  the  nervous  system 
implies  interaction.  The  self,  then,  is  no 
idle  spectator  of  material  events  (it  is  only 
awareness  as  such  that  is  idle),  but  an 
active  participant,  a  combatant  whose  blows 
are  sure  to  count. 

But  what  if  all  this  is  predetermined  by 
the  past  ?  The  question  implies  that  the 
combatant  (for  you  cannot  be  a  mere 
philosopher)  is  afraid  his  blows  will  not 
count,  but  that  the  past  will  determine 
the  future  over  his  head.  A  groundless 
fear  !  For  the  self,  with  its  thoughts, 
feelings  and  desires,  being  present,  is  in 

93 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

the  line  of  advance,  and  the  past  cannot 
lead  to  the  future  except  through  it.  It 
is  secure  of  its  determining  force.  And 
what  a  strange  fancy,  that  the  past  and 
future — which,  as  we  have  seen,  do  not 
exist — can  vie  for  one  moment  with  the 
present,  which  is  real  !  The  critic  of 
determinism,  in  considering  the  problem 
of  action,  has  inadvertently  omitted  himself 
from  the  universe. 

The  whole  thing  is  an  airy  illusion, 
and  rests  on  the  sophistical  assumption 
that  determination,  a  relation  between  two 
instants  of  time,  is  more  real  than  the 
instants.  The  instants  are  the  reality,  and 
each  instant  is  free.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  what 
it  is.  Thus  the  instantaneity  of  the  present 
saves  us  both  from  fate  and  from  chance. 

It  seems  to  me  that,  with  this,  the  sting 
of  determinism  is  completely  removed. 
And  how  many  arguments  there  are  on 
the  other  side  !  First,  what  have  we  to 
hope  for  from  pure  chance  ?  Second, 
should  we  wish  to  escape  from  all  deter¬ 
mination  ?  If  you  listen  to  the  wise 

94 


Life 

words  of  a  superior,  that  is  determina¬ 
tion  ;  if  you  give  good  advice  to  a  child, 
that  is  determination.  The  essential 
thing  is  not  that  we  should  be  free  from 
all  determination,  even  by  reason  and 
conscience — even  by  divine  guidance  (in 
whatever  sense  that  may  exist) — but  that 
we  should  be  free  from  our  passions  :  and 
for  these,  as  we  have  seen,  the  true  antidote 
is  intelligence. 

There  is  apt  to  remain,  however,  a 
certain  moral  discomfort,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  causation  rules  so  unrestrictedly. 
It  is  felt  that  novelty  is  excluded,  and  that 
life  has  lost  its  interest  and  freshness.  This, 
I  believe,  is  another  illusion,  to  which  our 
theory  affords  an  excellent  answer. 

Let  us  consider  first  the  remedies  at 
which  philosophers  have  grasped  in  their 
distress.  While  admitting  that  the  uni¬ 
verse  generally  is  ruled  by  cause  and  effect, 
and  that  the  operation  of  these  is  mathe¬ 
matical,  it  has  been  hoped  that  causation 
only  expresses  the  average  and  statistical 

95 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

form  of  the  movement  of  Nature,  and  that 
deep  down  she  is  capricious  and  indeter¬ 
minate  like  any  other  woman.  It  may 
be  suspected  that  the  capriciousness  of 
women  is  due  rather  to  the  complexity  and 
delicacy  of  their  instincts  than  to  a  com¬ 
plete  absence  of  motive  ;  and  the  apparent 
capriciousness  of  Nature  is  open  to  the 
same  explanation — though  this  would  de¬ 
prive  us  of  our  refuge  from  determinism. 

The  uniformity  of  Nature,  as  has  been 
lately  pointed  out,  is  closely  connected 
with  the  uniformity  of  space  and  time, 
which  so  far  as  common  sense  is  able  to 
judge  are  alike  in  all  their  parts  ;  and 
it  is  important  as  a  basis  of  human  life 
that  it  should  be  so.  Recent  discoveries 
concerning  the  atom  do  not,  I  think,  tend 
to  weaken  this  probability. 

But  wait  !  there  is  another  possibility. 
Space  and  time  are  only  the  framework 
of  Reality  ;  you  and  I  are  not  made  of 
inches  and  minutes  (or  our  whole  philo¬ 
sophy  is  false).  There  is,  then,  inside 
this  framework,  a  complex  distribution  of 

9  6 


Life 

forces  which  spells  variety .  Now,  since 
the  points  and  instants  are  infinite,  the 
possible  recombinations  of  the  forces  of 
Nature  are  infinite  ;  and  no  lapse  of  time 
can  exhaust  them.  We  may,  then,  con¬ 
fidently  look  forward  to  to-morrow  with  the 
expectation  that  it  will  not  be  like  to-day. 

To  sum  up  :  where  the  choice  lies 
between  irrationalism  and  fatalism,  the 
path  of  reason  is  in  the  middle.  The 
“  everlasting  return  ”  of  Nietzsche  is  rigid 
fatalism.  Who,  if  asked  whether  he  wished 
to  live  his  life  (the  greater  part  of  it)  over 
again,  would  not  answer  with  Leopardi  : 
For  God’s  sake,  No  !  This  is  Scylla. 
There  is  in  us  an  inextinguishable  thirst 
for  Novelty.  This  might  be  gratified,  with¬ 
out  indeterminism — which  is  Charybdis 
— in  case  the  variety  of  the  Universe  was 
infinite,  like  time  and  space.  Then  there 
would  never  be  any  unwished-for  repetition 
of  the  old.  Then  Nature  would  be  truly 
Creative.  Time  could  not  wither  nor 
custom  stale  her  infinite  diversity. 

(And  this,  moreover,  would  justify 

97  H 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

Hume’s  distinction  between  knowledge  of 
mathematical  principles  and  knowledge  of 
matters  of  fact.) 

Here  is  the  Novelty  that  keeps  the 
Universe  fresh  and  young.  And  this 
novelty  is  to  a  considerable  part — the  part 
that  most  concerns  us — placed  in  human 
hands.  There  is  nothing  that  a  man’s 
instincts  suggest,  and  his  powers  seem  to 
justify,  for  which  he  may  not  reasonably 
hope.  And  what  is  true  of  the  individual 
is  true  of  humanity. 

See  now  how  useful  are  the  infinitely 
great  and  the  infinitely  small.  The  in- 
stantaneity  of  time  saved  us  from  fate  ; 
the  infinite  variety  of  things  rescues  us 
from  dullness.  It  remains  only  that  we 
should  be  saved  from  an  overweening 
opinion  of  our  selves  :  and  this,  I  think, 
is  promised  by  another  aspect  of  infinity. 

It  follows  from  infinity,  taken  with  our 
doctrine  of  cognition,  that  there  is  nothing 
either  small  or  great  but  thinking  makes 
it  so.  In  other  words,  magnitude  is 

98 


Life 

relative.  It  may  at  times  seem  to  us 
curious  that  we  should  be  perched  precisely 
in  the  middle  of  time  and  space,  and 
precisely  midway  between  the  very  great 
and  the  very  small  things  :  but  this  is  an 
effect  of  perspective.  Nor  are  we  bigger 
feelingly  than  selves  that  seem  very  small 
to  us  :  the  microbe  is  composed  of  an 
infinity  of  parts,  each  of  which  is  a  feeling 
— what  more  are  we  ?  There  is  therefore 
no  ground  for  supposing  that  an  elephant 
with  the  toothache  suffers  a  pain  pro¬ 
portionate  to  his  bulk,  or  that  a  microbe 
in  the  like  case  would  suffer  less. 

This,  I  think,  is  the  true  sense  of 
Leibniz’s  doctrine  of  the  ponds  full  of 
fishes  and  the  gardens  full  of  plants. 
There  is  no  part  of  this  strange  universe, 
however  small  or  however  large,  that  is 
not  capable  of  taking  on  the  form  of  a 
synthetic  self.  But  this  is  only  a  capacity, 
not  an  actuality  ;  and  actual  selves,  with 
the  infinite  variety  of  complexities  that 
are  open  to  them,  are  to  be  judged  on 
their  merits.  Here  is  a  thought  that  may 

99  h  2 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

enable  us  to  recover  some  of  our  self- 
respect  in  the  presence  of  the  microbe, 
and  even  of  the  elephant. 

The  detachment  of  essences  from  things, 
of  the  “  what”  from  the  “  that,”  seems  to 
be  purely  the  work  of  human  intelligence, 
exercising  its  power  of  abstraction.  Infinite, 
once  more,  is  the  variety  of  these  Hirn- 
gespinnste ,  these  ideas,  which  the  human 
mind  can  frame,  by  recombining  in  re¬ 
flection  the  data  given  it  in  sense  ;  but 
there  seems  no  reason  to  assume  that  these 
possibilities  are  anywise  realities,  except  as 
embodied  in  the  time,  space,  and  matter 
or  feeling  which  form  the  frame  of  Nature. 

*  Mathematics  of  course  are  extra -human 
and  a  priori  ;  but  they  are  truths  about 
the  characters  of  time  and  space  and  the 
relations  between  their  parts  :  mathematical 
implication  falling  under  the  general  head 
of  the  uniformity  of  time  and  space,  as 
logical  implication  falls  under  the  general 
head  of  the  identities  and  differences  of 
the  meanings  of  language. 

ioo 


Life 


Mind,  on  our  theory,  is  of  course  purely 
a  result  of  organization.  A  portion  of 
immediate  experience  becomes  a  subject 
and  is  so  by  an  external  relation,  not  in 
itself ;  just  as,  once  there  is  a  subject, 
another  portion  of  immediate  experience 
may  become  its  object,  and  is  so  then  by 
an  external  relation,  but  in  itself  is  only 
a  real  thing. 

The  ultimate  elements  of  the  structure 
of  Nature  are  thus  time,  space,  and  feeling 
which  is  force.  And  between  time  and 
space  on  the  one  hand,  and  feeling  which 
is  force  on  the  other,  there  is  an  ultimate 
unlikeness  of  kind,  in  that  each  is  not  the 
other,  and  yet  is  necessary  to  the  other. 
To  use  single  terms  for  them,  they  are 
the  matter  of  the  Universe  and  its  order  : 
two  unlike  things,  though  both  in  a  sense 
exist.  Apart  from  these  things  there  is 
nothing. 

These  two  aspects  of  Existence  are 
equally  necessary  to  life.  Without  the 
matter  of  feeling,  living  beings  would  be 
senseless  automata.  If  feeling  were  not 

ioi 


A  Theory  of  Knowledge 

force,  there  would  be  duration  but  no 
change  or  history.  In  the  absence  of  time 
and  space,  existence  would  be  without  form 
and  void — or  would  not  be  at  all. 

But  the  human  mind  cannot  look  out 
upon  things  except  from  its  own  point  of 
view,  and  to  it  feeling  and  force  are  Reality, 
while  time  and  space  are  Truth.  United, 
they  are  the  standard  for  human  thought, 
and  there  is  no  salvation  for  it  except 
in  correspondence  with  them.  When  we 
think  of  the  infinite  variety  of  things,  and 
that  each  minutest  item  is  animate,  Truth 
and  Reality  seem  to  blaze  with  a  splendour 
like  the  sun. 


102 


Hinaufgesckaut ! — Der  Berge  Gipfelriesen 
Verkiinden  schon  die  feierlichste  Stunde  ; 

Sie  diirfen  friih  des  ezuigen  Lickts  geniessen , 

Das  spa  ter  sick  zu  uns  hernieder  zvendet. 

Jetzt  zu  der  Alpe  griingesenkten  JViesen 
Wird  neuer  Glanz  und  Deutlickkeit  gespendet , 

TJnd  stufenweis  herab  ist  es  gelungen — 

Sie  tritt  hervor  ! — und ,  leider  schon  geblendet , 

Kehr  ich  mich  weg ,  vom  Augenschmerz  durckdrungen . 

So  ist  es  also ,  wenn  ein  sehnend  Hoffen 

Dem  hochsten  Wunsch  sick  traulich  zugerungen , 

Erfiillingspforten  findet  fliigelojfen  ; 

Nun  aber  bricht  aus  jenen  ezvigen  Griinden 
Ein  Flammeniibermassy  zvir  stehn  betrojfen : 

Des  Lebens  Fackel  zoollten  zvir  entziinden , 

Ein  Feuermeer  umscklingt  uns ,  zvelch  ein  Feuer  ! 

I  si’s  Lieb  P  ist's  Hass  P  die  gliihend  uns  umzvinden , 
Mit  Sckmerz’  und  Freuden  zvechselnd  ungeheuer , 

So  dass  zvir  nieder  nach  der  Erde  blickeny 
Z u  bergen  uns  in  jugendlichstem  Sckleier. 

So  bleibe  denn  die  Sonne  mir  im  Riicken  ! 

Der  WassersturZy  das  Felsenriff  durchbrausendy 
Ikn  schau  ich  an  mit  zvachsendem  Entziicken. 

Von  Sturz  zu  Sturzen  zvalzt  er  jetzt  in  tausend , 
Dann  abertausend  Stromen  sich  ergiessendy 
Hoch  in  die  Liifte  Schaum  an  Sckaume  sausend. 

Allein  zuie  herrlichy  diesem  Sturm  erspriessendy 
Wolbt  sich  des  bunten  Bogens  Wechseldauery 
Bald  rein  gezeichnety  bald  in  Luft  zerfiiessend. 

Urn  her  verbreitend  duftig  kiihle  Schauer. 

Der  spiegelt  ab  das  mensckliche  Bestreben . 

Ihm  sinne  nachy  und  du  begreifst  genauer  : 

Am  farbigen  A  b glanz  ha  ben  zvir  das  Leben. 


BD161.S92 
A  theory  of  knowledge, 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1  1012  00008  3388 


y/t 


